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^ ^ EXTRACTS

FROM THK

LETTERS AND JOURNALS

OF

WILLIAM CORY

AUTHOR OF *10NICA'

SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY

FRANCIS WARRE CORNISH
O;eforb

PRINTED FOR THE SUBSCRIBERS

MDCCCXCVII

Oyforb

PRINTED FOR THE SUBSCRIBERS

BY HORACE HART

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS

A. C. AiNGER.

E. C. Austen Leigh.
A. C. Benson.

Hon. R. B. Brett.

A. D. Coleridge.

Capt. a. H. Drummond.

W. Durnford.

Ven. C. W. Furse, Archdeacon of Westminster.

Viscount Halifax,

Colonel H. Hallam-Parr, C.B.

F. C. Hodgson.
H. E. Luxmoore.

Hon. G. W. S. Lyttelton, C.B.

Hon. Sir S. H. Northcote, Bart., C.B., M.P.

The Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, G.C.V.O.

Sir F. Pollock, Bart.

F. H. Rawlins.

The Earl of Rosebery, K.G., K.T.

Rev. Canon Scott-Holland.

H. O. Sturgis.

E. L. Vaughan.

C. D. Williamson.

Hon. F. L. Wood.

William Johnson, son of William Charles Johnson and
Mary Theresa Johnson, daughter of Peter Wellington Furse,
born Jan. 9, 1823.

Elected King's Scholar at Eton, 1832.

Newcastle Scholar, 184 1.

Elected Scholar of King's College, Cambridge, Feb. 23, 1842.

Chancellor's Medallist for English Poem, 1843.

Craven Scholar, 1844.

Succeeded to Fellowship at King's, Feb. 23, 1845.

B.A. Cambridge, 1845.

Appointed Assistant Master at Eton, Sept. 17, 1845.

Became tenant of Halsdon, 1870.

Left Eton, Easter, 1872.

Resigned Fellowship at King's, Oct. 1872.

Took the name of Cory, Oct. 1872.

Left Halsdon and lived in Madeira, Feb. 1878.

Married Rosa Caroline, daughter of Rev. George de Carteret

Guille, Rector of Little Torrington, Devon, Aug. 1878.
Birth of his son Andreiv Cory, July, 1879.
Returned to England and settled at Hampstead, Sept. 1882.
Died, June 11, 1892.
Buried at Hampstead, June 16, 1892.

LETTERS AND JOURNALS

FAMILY LETTERS [pages 1-61),

to his Father and Mother, Mr. and Mrs. C. W.Johnson,

his Brother^ Rev. C. W, Furse^ and his Sisters.

Eton College, May 6, 1838.

Though I have not written to you yet I may sup-
pose that you have heard of my arrival and subsequent
proceedings, either from Mama or Sarah. The four-oar
is in full operation, and I enjoy it very much, going out
about two hours a day and sapping at private work three
a day on an average. One of the political plays of
Aristophanes, which is very satisfying and amusing, but
hard in many respects, is my present occupation. I hope
to finish this and two more this half, with other things of
which I am yet uncertain.

Great interest is excited at this time in the school by
a prospectus printed at Ingalton's in Eton, stating that
early in May (that is, within a few days) will be
published ' Translations and Paraphrases from the
striking passages of the Classics in Poetry,' price one
shilling. The plan is very conceited and arrogant, and
the idea of translating the Classics is neither attractive
nor likely to succeed, as it has been done by so many

B

2 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

great m^n already. The author states himself to be an
Etonian, and signs himself ' M. H.,' which is supposed to
be fictitious ; and Westmacott, a clever youth, understand-
ing this kind of work (publishing), desultory in reading,
and possessing a good deal of leisure, is fixed upon as
the author. It will be continued periodically if the first
number sells. I shall buy it at all events, but do not
expect to be either edified or amused by its contents.
I only hope that it may lead to some general publication
conducted like the Etonian by the united talent of the
school, which might reflect credit on the school, and
show that while engaged in the more abstruse studies of
Latin and Greek, we do not neglect those literary fields
in which former Etonians have so much distinguished
themselves. I dipped into Horace Walpole s Royal and
Noble Authors lately, and think from his style and
versatility of talent that if the system of periodical works
had prevailed in his bo) hood as it now does, he, with his
friends Gray and West, might have conducted a most
excellent concern after the fashion of the Etonian,
I wish you joy of yoijr vacation, which must have
commenced by this time.

Eton, May 14, 1838.

I have some news, for a wonder. Last night we
began our theatrical season with the Original and the
Sleep-walker^ two tolerable farces, acted in the best
possible style as far as the great characters, and got up
in scenery, &c., very neatly and cleverly, especially
considering our very limited funds, about £'] odd.
The theatre is erected in Long Chamber, in front of two
small chambers, where they dress ; there are six scenes
to last the season, and curtains, &c., with beds turned up

1838] THEATRICALS. ' MONT EM SURE' 3

used as walls. Beds too were our <rallerics, some turned
on the sides, some perpendicular, with boxes of chairs
for the Sixth l^\)rm and Liberty and two or three
visitors, one of whom (a painter who has published views
of Eton) was our musician, whistling- very excellently
in accompaniment to a wretched g-uitar, and singing
occasionally. Hie three good actors were Westmacott
(the manager), Bullock and Tarver, all sextiles. I was
much amused ; but the plays would certainly not bear
reading; it is the tone and variation of voices that give
all the animation, for there was hardly any genuine
humour though two or three coups de theatre.

I had my Don Quixote yesterday bound beautifully at
3.?. dd, per volume, so that it is an extremely handsome
book. I w^as rather imprudent in running into such an
expense, since this season is very expensive ; but I have
a great liking to making some addition or improvement
to my shelves every half at my own cost. Though
temporary sacrifices, they will give me lasting pleasure,
and never, I hope, entail regret on me for having
purchased a useless book, because I always consider
long before I strike the bargain. On Wednesday is
Montem Sure ^ night, most odious orgies heretofore, but
this time to be much corrected. Williams is expected
to clear about ;^6oo this Montem. What a sum ! as
good as Kings to a clever youth, because he might
thereby maintain himself at another college with
economy, and gain a good fellowship by his own
exertions.

W. is very confident about getting lodgings for you,
but I hear that no place is to be had in Windsor

^ See Maxwell Lyte's History of Eton College, pp. 455, 456
(ed. 1889).

B 2

4 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

under a long period ; and in Eton, though houses are
disengaged, they are merely waiting to raise their
charges immoderately. At all events you and Mama
ought to decide soon on your coming, lest you get none.
I sincerely wish you may come, that I may have some
one to walk and talk with, for last time.

I was very desolate, though in such a crowd, feeling
most strongly the best poetry and best philosophical
principle Byron ever wrote. ' You knows wot I means,'
as the boatswain said when he was not allowed to swear,
and therefore said ' Bless you ! '

Four-oar would get on much better if we always went
with the proper crew, which we do not. I am improving,
and like it much. Will mind your instructions thereon.
M. H., the new publication, comes out to-morrow. Won't
I buy it and bring it home } I am anxious about it.
Have you read Nicholas Nickleby^ by the author of
Pickwick ? It is very fair, at least I judge from two
numbers; not so good as Pick., on a different footing —
serious, but satirical. As I hate crossing, I remain
Your affectionate Son,

William Johnson.

Eton, Feb. a, 184a.

The enclosed note from the Scholar who is to be
my ' chum ^ ' will let you know all that I know, except
that another vScholar writes to Carter to say that the
Fellows are voting dividends before the proper day so as
to let Chapman'^ have no pecuniary excuse for delaying

' A new Scholar or* nib 'at King's was handed over to a senior Scholar,
who was calUd his 'churn,' and had to sec him through llic complicated
ceremonial of his first week in College.

^ Ihen I\lluw of King's; afterwards Bishop of Colombo and Fellow

184a] LEAVING ETON

his m.'irriacre. So I shall get no dlvidcncl ; but that does
not matter, in comparison with the advantage of getting-
there earlier. If dividend-day is past before the Resig-
nation comes, I shall take the liberty of waiting here as
long as they will let me, as I am most truly reluctant to
go at this time.

I shall not have to pouch Hawtrey or my Tutor. As
for my picture for the latter, if he asks for it, I think you
had better tell him to wait for it till some future year
when you are less poor. At present I deprecate the
notion of your giving it. But I should wish, as you
hint, to make my Dame a present, as Wellington did.
In London I might get a small silver inkstand or some-
thing of the sort for the old lady.

I shall be almost obliged to spend other sums, in
giving a supper to the Sixth Form, pouching my fag,
and other customary taxes. Therefore I must with your
leave get from my dame a lump of money, I cannot tell
how much yet, to get me away from Eton and establish
me at King's. . . I may mention w^hat happened on
Monday week, which I think I have not said. Hawtrey,
after talking about some arrangements for the great
morrow, spoke earnestly and strongly in approbation of
me for my conduct in regard to the memorable dispute
in this Society, which he had that day heard of He
shook hands, expressed his confidence, and spoke in
a new tone.

I suppose I owe this, which is valuable to me and will
be gratifying to you, to the excellent Abraham ^, with
whom I have had dealings you have not heard of, and

of Eton ; on the vacation of whose Fellowship W. J. became Scholar of
the College.

^ Fellow of King's ; afterwards Bishop of Wellington.

LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

whose favourable opinion as to the same matter I had
heard before from Rice. So I am to leave, as I never
expected, with good opinions from the superiors, and
I trust no enemy among- my schoolfellows.

King's College, Cambridge,

May 1, 184a.

I have read hard for some days till Friday, when note-
writing in the morning and a fly in my eye in the
evening stopped the progress I am making through
Herodotus. Yesterday was a blank in that way too,
I had meant to keep it at the first anniversary of to-day's
great personal victory ^ ; unexpectedly soon we got the
news of another Newcastle scholar, whom I had the
pleasure of congratulating (by letter) in the person of
my friend Rice ^ — who, I am happy to say, won easily,
proving himself a blood horse, though deficient in bone
and wind, and beating the half-breds that had been
feared as his dangerous competitors. So I rejoiced most
triumphantly — though wishing I had been able to join
in the cheers in Long Chamber, or to have some one
here capable of going full lengths with me in jubilation,
which (as ugly Euclid says) is impossible.

I was left still to be anxious and quite uncertain about
the medal, wishing most warmly for my young friend
Drake, and mostly for James, the hope of Cookesley — at
all events for a colleger. To-day came a letter from
Browning (the present captain, who has very kindly lent
me all the papers) telling me of the rejoicings they had
for getting both Scholarship and Medal in College.

' The Newcastle Scholarship, 1841.

' J. Morland Rice, K.S., Newcastle Scholar, 184a.

i84a] KING'S. NEWCASTLE SCHOLARSHIP 7

There was .1 very toug^h fi^ht between Joynes\ Scott-,
James K. S., vSimpson, now so placed. vScott and Joynes
had three hours' paper work in sin^^^le contest, and at last
the Medal was given to Joynes, at which as a colleger
I fervently rejoice— sorry as I am that James, who has
no other chance, is beaten, and that Drake is only in the
last division of the ' number.' This Scott is a new one,
and thoroughbred ; not expected to do well — he will,
I fear, beat the collegers — Joynes and all — next year,
when riper. But at present, having the two first, and
the fourth, and having six out of the nine that were
selected (as you will see by the papers) the K. S.'s had
ample reason for vociferation, in which I wish I could
have joined. In dismissing the subject I desire you will
all drink Rice's health — bearing in mind that his and my
names are the only X.v^o following in the list that have
K. S. after them.

I kept my anniversary by reading the letters of con-
gratulation I received and kept. . . One year fled since
that memorable day ! In the interval I have had ' many
fair blossoms falling under foot for the devil to trample
on ' (as the noble sermon I heard to-day from Selwyn
said), many hopes pruned off — many fruits decayed.
And on the other side I could call to mind many higher
honours and better joys in the last year than that much
talked of victory gave. The best to say on the subject
is that — in spite of wasted time, and the loss of practised
dexterity in matters of scholarship — I feel by a full year
superior to what I was then in real knowledge and more
matured faculties. Ambition I have lost — readiness in
composition still more — emptiness and ignorance I feel

* Rev. J. L. Joynes, late Lower Master of Eton.

2 Rev. W. B. Scott, D.D., late Head Master of Westminster.

8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

more day after day. But as I should calculate a leap
knowing- what I could clear, in like manner I am bold to
say that as far as the ' can ' goes I am capable of winning
before three years are out a scholarship ten times as
hotly contested as the Newcastle. Whether it will be so
is another thing ; I fancy not.

King's College,

June 2, 1842.

I have not been working at all well lately — the con-
tagion of nonchalant laziness and apathy I have not
escaped. But with English books it is the old story —
I manage to devour as many as ever, and make pleasant
use of my increased facilities in getting at such as interest
me. I score for the last week or two the Life 0/ Ham-
mond, Scrope on Deerstalking, Palgrave's Merchant
and Friar, three or four of the deepest and longest
Tracts for the Times, two or three of Sheridan Knowles'
plays, and sundries of all sorts.

Alum Bay Hotel, Isle of Wight,
August 13, 1842.

On Tuesday early we left Beechwood in very fine
weather and good circumstances of travel— steamed to
Cowes — then boated — dined —and went off by steamboat
to Ryde. There we went to the hotel, and in the evening
called on the Hallams. The great man, as I was pre-
viously told, has an odd manner, and talks very quick
as if naturally nervous, which indeed he is, in the way of
very untroublesome fidgetiness. I knew his face in the
fine engraving from his picture, but he is now older and
more sharp in nose and chin, but a very fine-looking

1842] BEECHWOOD. MR. HALLAM 9

elderly man. I have seen him much for four clays, and
should t'vcn now ^uess him to be a naval man vv^ith very
little tincture of learning- — remarkably kind-hearted and
equable, and always thinking of his children ; but not
altogether one you would suspect of having made himself
a name. . . Thence [from Shanklin] I had a walk with
young Hallam ^ through the fine scenery to Ventnor, and
enjoyed his conversation very much, with the prospect of
finding him a valuable acquaintance at Cambridge. We
dined at V^entnor, thence drove on to Blackgang Chine, and
in due time reached this quiet hotel most prosperously.
Yesterday was delightfully spent, by me at least. We
boated to the Needles, and durst not go round them to
the caves, &c., ow^ng to the roughness. The bay is really
very beautiful, and the downs above quite as elastic and
much loftier than those at Bude ; and the furze, rabbits,
loneliness, &c., in my solitary walks, helped to make me
feel quite at home. . . Besides all that 1 have mentioned
that has made my expedition pleasant and interesting,
I w^ill add the great negative advantage of Miss Duck-
worth's managing our movements without being at all
fussy — the glorious excitement it gave me to be on
board the yacht when it was tacking with a sharp
breeze up Portsmouth Sound, and the telescope showed
me again all I saw last year, and much more, and under
much better circumstances than then — and perhaps my
nautical pulse seldom ran so high — also the high grati-
fication of reading a volume of masculine, rich, dramatic
poetry called j&^zc;^;/ the Fair ^ssihxoSi I finished last night.
Nor shall I be at all sorry to get back to the quiet Forest
and our regular work, after five very happily-spent days

' Henry Hallam, younger son of the historian.

lo LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

of touring-. . . Mrs. L., our visitor, is apparently a quiet,
good woman ; but her son is a conceited, showy, loose-
thinking- young la\vyer, running over volubly, and to my
bigoted ears offensively, with the venomous jargon of
such liberalism as one might have sucked in at Cambridge
seven or eight years ago. Really every real Liberal
I meet with frightens me more and more. Their slang
may mix well enough with great kindliness, good humour
and a sort of benevolence, but it seems inseparable from
dangerous and contemptible corruptions or evasions of
truth. As I had rather not argue much or speak out
very explicitly my own comfortable bigotries, I content
myself with telling- this creature that I disagree with
him, and turning- the conversation by asking for legal
information.

K. C. C, Aiig. i6, 1842.

We had a marvellous storm here on Wednesday. . .
I think this a great markworthy event. If, as they say,
history had best be, if possible, an account oi tho^ people^
not of laws and bayonets and courtiers, such a visitation
as this storm were then no mean subject. Such things
are talked of at every man's threshold, and pity and
courage and awe and thankfulness must be their issues
in the minds of thousands whom Reform Bills and
Chartist petitions and victories of Frederick the Great
touch not half so nearly. Mr. and Mrs. Shute's wedding
was a great event in Torrington — folks made more of it
than of Sir C. Napier's conquests in Scinde — and if we
could by pen-craft get into our histories the pith of all
that our humble people feel about their neighbours'
weddings, we should know more of each other, perhaps.
However, it is very unfair to blame historians for not

184a] HISTORY. FRANCIS HORNER 11

being- able to tell you what the millions feel and think
about those matters which really concern them. . .

I have read Mctfioii'S of Frdiicis Horner— -^xv instruc-
tive book to me, because it vSets forth plans and habits of
systematic readings; a thinji;-, I believe, unknown to Cam-
bridge men, except when working for an object. A sound-
headed man was this Francis, and tried all dry subjects —
among others a disquisition about the numbers of the
Hebrews in the wilderness — done for a friend. This, and
a mention of Paul Sarpi, and of a sermon of Sydney
Smith's on 'The religion of justice and benevolence, as
distinguished from that of form, devotion, and fanaticism '
(.''Christianity), are the only traces I saw in his letters
or journal of anything appertaining to religion. I think
we are improved in these last twenty years ; our men
don't cut their throats like Castlereagh, Whitbread and
Romilly, nor would people taking up such a share of love
and respect from good men in the most cultivated circles
be found nowadays so indifferent about religion as Horner
seems then to have been.

Beechwood, Aug. 22, 1842.

I cannot say how much I regret not having learnt
music younger. I mean to do so at Cambridge soon,
as others of my circle do. French I do not care so much
for, but still hope to acquire it before long. But verily
when all that I wish to learn and see and do comes
thronging in, as it often has lately, I not only ' feel the
weight of chance desires,' but an aching sense of
ignorance, laziness, ineptitude, and waste of time. I am
persuaded (are not you ?) that the saints who will reign
a thousand years between the first and second resurrection

12 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

will have something to do, as they will still be men, and
inheritors of the earth. Is there any harm in supposing-
that the unfinished studies of this life may be continued
then .'* May not such a (subsidiary) hope go far to quench
the craving for knowledge which so many cannot help
feeling ? For my part this appetite is only in proportion
to my indolence and emptiness, as the convex side is
to the concave.

I opened a new untried vein yesterday in South's
Sermons, one of which on the Trinity does just meet my
expectation of a compact masculine piece of theological
reasoning.

Has the Auditor^ received Mr. Chadwick's Report
on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes ?
It came here, and Mr. Hallam pointed it out to
us. I have been reading great parts of it with most
savage interest, some pages with my teeth clenched and
my feet kicking out as if I was in a football game,
and an impulse to reproach myself and every one else
for being able to think of or work at anything except
the subjects it touches on. Last week I used to be
reading this book at one time, at another the accounts of
the riots among the very people whose miserable neglect
is described by these Reports, and at another time the
stirring, long, grand poem oi Philip van Artcvelde, which
sets before one a very different and very similar view of
a manufacturing people and their superiors' conduct to
them, with seditions, pestilence, civil war, famine, &c., as
the fruits of that system — so that unintentionally I was
thinking in a circle; and to take up a book, however
good in itself, relating merely to what the Higher classes

* His father, lately made Auditor of Torrington and four other
Unions.

1842] MR. IIALLAM. CRAVEN SCHOLARSII/P 13

are concerned with, such as The Advancement of Learn-
ings was enou<2^h to make me cjuite fiercely and indig--
nantly impatient of such comparatively otiose things.
And after all there comes a calm, stern. Plain vSermon
to restrain its readers' hearts within the limits of ' lofty
aims and lowly duties.' And so I am beginning this
week more quietly and cheerfully than I finished last —
not that I mean to give up reading the Report of
Mr. Chadwick, or that I will ever allow myself to
forget its purport. . .

The great man ^ is a ver}^ likeable creature, but too
fond of reading newspapers when I should wish to hear
him talking, if not to talk with him. I feel it an honour
even to see, in this every-day way, so eminent and sound
a scholar, whose printed opinions have already been
of so much power over me at a time when I never
dreamt of making his acquaintance. Of course I am not
tactless enough to bore him with questions relating to
literary matters, and I observe that he does not relish them
when put now and then by his son, and seems to shirk
the character of the literary oracle which his writing
would make one fancy him to be. But even what he
lets fall without being able to help himself is to me
worth remarking and remembering, and the observation
of even his superficial ways of thinking- is enough to
make every meal and stroll interesting. . .

K. C. C, Dec. 16, 1842.

There is to be no scholarship vacant next year, so
I am told I ought to get myself some notice this time,
and so make sure of the '44 Craven, which Kennedy

» Mr. Hallam.

14 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

repeatedly takes for granted I ought to get. I must
say I feel sometimes sure of it, yet at others i^not that it
often enters my headj I look with dismay at the impos-
sibility of getting up the requisite knowledge. Kennedy
now and then expresses surprise at my having read so
much Latin and Greek — but it is very clear to me that
I have read none of it well^ except what I have done with
him and Shilleto.

K. C. C.yjan. 3, 1843.

I think you would all like what I have lately rejoiced
in — Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome — of which the
last Blackwood will give you a notion, if you do not
meet with the volume itself It would indeed clear up
in a woman's eyes some substantial and true image of
what those people were of whom your Corneilles and
Vertots and Rollins and Goldsmiths and all a lady reads
on the subject, save only Shakespeare, give you such
inadequate and partial views.

Lately I have caught an earnest craving for mathe-
matical knowledge, with a sense of shame at not knowing
anything of the kind — this began with a sense of inability
to get deep into the honoured science of Christian
Architecture without mechanical truths in my head — and
I am also convinced that it would be essentially profitable
as an aid to theological incjulrics. Of course I have
such a vast mass of classical work lying more direcdy
before my path, besides the Divinity work enjoined by
the College, that I have no likelihood of being a mathe-
matician ; but some time perhaps I may be able to
supply this immense deficiency, as they tell me a year
will make one cognizant of about as much as I want
to get hold of.

1843] MACAULAY^ ARNOLD AND MANNING 15

The lonq^er I live, and the more forcibly now as I am
be^innini^ another year, I am ^c^rowin^ to a conviction of
the inadequate space of Hfe this world offers for making
acquaintance with all that this generation inherits of
knowledge and wisdom. Yet will I know ' in part ' —
God being my helper.

K. C. C, Feb. 1843.

I had great sport these Examination nights in reading
Reviews — especially I recommend one in the Edinbtirgh
by Macaulay on Madame D'Arblay, Jan. 43, which won
me to a pleasant interest in her — and a glorious one on
* Bees ' in the Quarterly.

Also I have been reading lately Arnold's and Man-
nings Sermons — both in very different kinds and degrees,
with high admiration, amounting to love for the men,
and no little advantage in comparing the two, besides
the separate edification they each serve to. As for
Manning, I think he must inevitably rank in future
generations as one of the noblest and most saintly of
our Church's writers — even alongside of Taylor and
Hooker.

I am falling into acquaintance with men (chiefly out of
King's) whose conversation I find useful, yet perilous,
because they are more or less liberal or untheological, or
in plain truth irreligious in their opinions about all kinds
of historical, educational, political, &c., subjects, and yet
well-meaning, not very conceited, and so much more
thoughtful than the team of King's Scholars in which
I run that I get stimulated into something stirring,
which all the time makes me feel how powerless I should

i6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

be in their hands were I not at bottom convinced of the
truth of the Cathohc Christian theory, the only compre-
hensive one. I by no means shrink from dealings with
these folks, and take it as a main part of my Cambridge
experience, being something I should probably not have
met with at Oxford : and it is on the same principle that
I read all kinds of latitudinarian and worldly books. It
all helps. It would never do for one who may in all
likelihood have to teach others to be afraid of getting
outside the pale (not a narrow one either) of the writers
I consider wis^ and rightminded.

K. C. C, March 21, 1843.

... I am engaged in writing the English poem (on Plato)
for the Chancellor's Medal — hard work, but pleasant ;
and were it not for Maine I should have hopes of winning
what no Kingsman as yet ever has. It is nearly finished,
and must be shown up in nine days.

K. C. C, Afay 9, 1843.

I am asked to belong to a novel kind of thing, an
Epigram Club, comprising at present (in its infancy)
Galton, Clarke, Maine \ Key and Bristed— all desirable
associates. I shall join. We are to do epigrams on a
subject given by rotation, I suppose ; send them in anony-
mously, and read them out together. This is not a
notion of high pretence, it is a very pleasant link for
a conspiracy of bookish folks who hke talking, and
I have a respect for the epigrammatic turn as a great

* Sir Henry Sumner Maine.

V

1843] EPIGRAM CLUB. 'PLATO' 17

and nowadays too much ncqi'lected ornament. N. B. —
Classical cpi scrams are one thinji^, newspaper squibs
another. If we harmonize well, we may perhaps extend
our objects.

K. C. C, ^^0^23, 1843.

I have enjoyed the Term as yet very much — only
pulled once ; but I have taken up fives vigorously, and
play pretty well, quite well enough for my companions ;
and it is the best of exercise, and almost the best of amuse-
ment. Once a week comes the agreeable and serviceable
stimulus of a debate ; though eloquence drops rather at
this season. I think I improve in speaking: certainly
have no kind of nervousness or hesitation, but get too
rambling and copious and long- sentenced unless very
much on my guard. The Epigram Club has met once,
to the number of eight, very pleasant folks, and the
compositions passable ; we meet again at a very attractive
man's rooms next Saturday. It will only be about once
a year each individual's duty to entertain the rest.

K. C. C, June 2, 1843.

They have given me the Medal ^ for Plato^ which they
ought not to have done. I won by a casting-vote ;
Maine's was not second — it was obscure, and in such
a mass of exercises (twenty- one) they would not take
the trouble to look at it close enough ; but I am really
more vexed than otherwise that mine must be recited
when there is known to be so much better a poem.
Yonge of King's has got the Camden Medal — being the

^ The Chancellor's Medal for English Verse.
C

i8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

best of the few bad ones sent in, as the Provost tells me.
Kingsmen are ver^' exultant about it, and ver^^ civil ;
and I suppose you will be pleased. Maine has the
Latin Ode and Epigrams ; Clarke the Greek one ; the
Porson is not yet adjudged, it 7nay come to Thring ^

The Provost voted against my po:m, but likes the
latter part ; he gives books for it. There were nine
good ones to choose out of, which they reduced to four.
I am for the present rather displeased at winning than
otherwise — had I been conscious that mine was really
good, and the best of those sent in, I should be very glad.
By-and-by when the exercise is forgotten, it \\i\\ be
pleasant to have my name (as the only Kingsman
hitherto) in a list w^hich contains Macaulay, Praed,
Tennyson, Whytehead and Maine, I am glad to think
I shall have an opportunity of altering my clumsy
rhymes.

K. C. C, Oct. lo, 1843.

While I was at Ottery I saw more of John Coleridge^
than of Henry ^, and liked the Judge better than any of
his family. I suppose he is the first man I have seen
that could justly be called (and felt to bej what books
call ' a wise man.' His eldest son will hardly turn out
so w^orthy of the title, but he is a very remarkable man.
I think the family (as an unit) corresponds in its regula-
tions, general tone and aspect as closely as one could
wish to what one would imagine an English family of
the really highest because most cultivated class. 1 was
much interested in looking over the church, and made

1

Rev. E. Thring, afterwards Head Master of Uppingham.
The Lord Chief Justice.
Father Coleridge, S.J.

i843] TRENCH. SAMUEL ROGERS AND 'PLATO' 19

a new Ix^ok-acciiiaintance, afterwards improved at Tor-
quay— tills was Trench \ whose poems I fell in with ;
a man oreatly to be honoured. I was in no small degree
a o^iiner in going- to Ottery, . .

I slept at the Christopher on Saturday. Next day
I saw the score of people I wanted to see, and was on
my legs so much as to get blisters on the sole. . . On
Monday I called on Hawtrey, who was very lively and
civil, and kept me some time at luncheon. He took
occasion to tell me what you may like to hear (but for
that reason I hope I should not be fool enough to repeat
it), that he had shown his copy of Plato to his friend
Samuel Rogers, ' who, as you know, is a fastidious judge,'
and he was pleased to express himself very favourably.
This, I assure you, is not worth more to me that the fact
of my bedmaker's having asked for copies and read them
and eulogized the thing.

K. C. C, Oct. 28, 1843.

I had read pretty well till the Queen came. . . I did
not enter much into the bustle and squeezing connected
with the visit. It was a great thing having the Queen
as a fellow- worshipper for once, instead of a mere object
to look at. I think it was a greater thing than being
presented to her. Beyond this reflection on the K. C.
Chapel service of Wednesday my personal sensations do
not extend in this matter. I avoided the squeezes in
Trinity Court and at the Senate House, and I never had
a good opportunity of joining in a real good cheer. But
I had peculiar satisfaction in associating that Wednesday
with St. Crispin s, the anniversary of Agincourt, my

' Archbishop of Dublin.
C 2

20 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov. 1843

Shakespearean festival. It was a very fit day to perform
a royal visit on ; but our good English folks ought to
read vShakespeare, and remember freshly in their flowing
cups Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter.

K. C. C, Nov. 16, 1843.

Torrington politics are a new topic. I like your having
influence enough to carry your nominee's election. I will
see about the Bible pictures. You must get your Book
Club by all means to take in the Foreign and Colonial
Review (Gladstone's) instead of the Foreig7i Quarterly —
all the cream of the original Foreign Quarterly has
been taken up into the new one, which is Tory instead
of Liberal; the last number contains a most valuable
article of Gladstone's on the present state of the Church,
which every one who has his eyes open is absolutely
bound to read. In the British and Foreign the poet
Sterling has written a very remarkable review of
Cnrlyle, which I am reading. I hope soon to read Past
and Pre tent.

K. C. C, Jan. 10, 1844.

I have a great advantage now as a Cambridge man,
which I had not last year. I am intimate with three
men of really good life and faithfulness, with whom
I agree, with whom I stand well, and whose example
I can look on. . . I think all the acquaintances I have
been picking up lately out of College are in the same
direction. In various ways all the men I have any
dealings with are people not afraid to carry Christianity
about with them — far more virtuous than schoolboys

I
Feb. 1844] QUEEN'S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE 2 1

are, thoiii^li lianllv so amiable. Not one schoolboy out
of a luinclrccl is oruidccl in his judg'cmcnt of rii^ht and
wron<i;- by anythino;- strong-cr than association.

K. C. C, Feb. 17, 1844.

I heard not much yesterday. One g"Ood newsmonger
told me that the electors ^ were unanimous before their
final meetings (indeed I had at second hand a message
from a Trinity don two hours before they met, which
I kept to myself, however, very warily). . . I had
plenty of visitors yesterday, but this style of congratu-
lation is of course very prosaic compared with the
exuberant triumph of partisans with K. S. gow^ns on,
in the School Yard and Long Chamber. . . People
here say they are unable to make so much of this event
as they generally do, because they were quite certain of
it ; only two of my allies here have ever spoken with
any misgivings, one of w^hom is the most strenuous of
my well-w^ishers. The barber, who is virtually a Kings-
man, has been in the habit of telling his gossips in
a nonchalant way that the electors might just as well
save themselves the trouble of examining.

I claim the fulfilment of the promise to feast the
almswomen ^ ; let it be on Tuesday, please.

K. C. C, Feb. 21, 1844.

I wonder you can all be so elated now, after having
gone through the same sensations three years ago ^. To

^ For the Craven University Scholarship. ^ At Torrington.

^ The Newcastle Scholarship.

22 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

me, with my constant recollections of that high time,
this second scholarship has less brightness about it : but
to find what happy effect such a result has on those who
are nearest, and to whom my whole fortunes belong, is
a privilege of the greatest value, and quite surpasses any
increase of good opinions I may have gained in this big
Cambridge. I took the announcement almost apatheti-
cally, but I cannot read the letters from home and
Rockbourne and Hillborough, from Wellington and
Fanny, W. Y. and L. D., without as warm and lively
a sense of what has happened as that I had in May, 1841.
At that time I never could have believed that the thing
could be repeated ; of course now I am sure it cannot.
Perhaps I may manage to get a medal or two, or I may
possibly get the Crosse Theological Scholarship some
three years hence (when a Bachelor) ; but these minor
things are nothing in the way of fixing one's position,
which is what the Newcastle does at Eton and the
classical Scholarships here. . . Maine is winning his proud
post in the teeth of popular ill-will (being considered an
upstart, because he is to beat Trinity men, &c.), whereas
I know of no one here who has had any strong or real
cause to wish for my failure, there being, in fact, no one
of these Craven candidates whose friends could at all
count his chances. I really believe no one is disap-
pointed by this result, i. e. no one but Thring has
not some other chance of high distinction, and he was
told by one who could tell him only to expect the second
place, though no doubt he did once hope and has always
read for victory. Again — I find all who congratulated
me on the Newcastle repeating it now . . . and besides
these old well-wishers, how many more have been added
since whose kind opinions are valuable : this Is some-

i844] CRAVEN SCHOLARSHIP 23

thing" to rejoice in — to have answered expectations, to
have done the piece of work once taken in hand,
to have fch my orowth and the fruit of all my educa-
tion, and to have made others happy— this makes it
a g-reat and signal blessing which cannot well come
again in life.

I have, by one small and one large supper, at great
but unavoidable expense, got over that part of the con-
sequences of my election which my acquaintances here
expect as their due : both were successful, except in the
absence of some that were invited. . . Last night, when
we were feasting, was the night for a feast which the
Collegers meant to hold in honour of the same event
(the best possible compliment, and quite unprecedented) ;
and, as I hope, it brought the ladies of the almshouses
that treat which was promised them. Another very
out-of-the-way compliment I have heard of was that at
the rooms of an Eton man whom I know very slightly
my health was drunk very heartily by a set of Eton and
Westminster men (members of an united boat club)^
And the Fellows of this College have spoken as if I had
done them a favour. Packe made a most heroic speech,
the Provost was quite happy about it, as it is always
meat and drink to him to get any honours in the College.
Eton masters and Eton boys have sent a dozen acceptable
letters, and so on.

We have not heard of any man's being second —
I have all reason to believe that the case was a very
clear one. Except the lectures that are going on I am
very idle ; and now that the work of answering the
letters has begun I shall be able to do little else for
some time.

k

^ Third Trinity.

24 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

K. C. C, April 1^, 1844.

It is ver^^ true that if a body wants to see the amenity
of spring- and of outward college life he should stand on
Clare Bridge on such a day as yesterday, and look at the
chestnut tree. Italian bridge and building most graceful,
garden most serene, trees out a good bit further than in
London, and far ahead of Torrington, sweet smells rife,
and birds besides, with the sun and weeping willow,
and clean water below, and no gownsmen within
sight (at least when I was there). It is the best part
of Cambridge.

K. C. Cjjune 10, 1844.

You take a very undue estimate of Lord Ashley's
worth — I don't like faint praise for so brave and wise
a reformer — but if you have been used so many years
to look on Pitt and Huskisson as model statesmen, no
wonder you and other Tories do not relish a man of
this mould.

I am very angry with our Mayfair people for caressing
this abominable Muscovite \ who happily is off to-morrow ;
a foul tyrant, who has torn Poland to pieces, and goes on
fiendishly stabbing at Circassia, and keeps his Church in
a state of servitude and his Court in a state of rank vice.
All they can say in his favour is that he is handsome.
Hut with some people the title may serve to remind
them of Alexanders happy visit in 18 14, and if that
dupes them it is very excusable.

' Nicholas I.

i844] LORD ASHLEY. VISIT TO ETON 25

K. C. C, Oct. II, 1844.

The end of my walk from Slough last Friday night
brought mc up in my old Lower Chamber study, and
threw me back three years — and then debating in Pop
just in my old way (perhaps a little wiser by this time
than the old Journal-books tell me I zuas), sculling up to
Boveney alone (I went no higher because the new lock
they have made has revolutionized the rest of the voyage
to Surley and destroyed its best attraction for me) —
looking on at a football match — dining in Hall, &c., were
all solid bits of boyhood, and in themselves almost un-
adulterated by aught that I may have picked up of late
years. My Dame hung out to me most civilly, my pupils
past and future were friendly. I had a long spell with
Cookesley, nearly enough talk with other more interest-
ing members of the sister College. . . I thought Col-
lege seemed to be in a better state than I have reason
to think it was two years ago, and very^ little altered
yet by the progress of civilization. If they adopt
half-measures, like partitioning Long Chamber, they
will make a bad business of their intended domestic
rearrangements. . .

Immediately on disembarking I was plunged into one
of those Trin. Coll. disquisitions over a tea-table, which
made up my recent academical year — at it hammer and
tongs, tw^isting notions about just as if I had taken up the
threads of last term without any interruption. Only it
is very interesting to notice how people's minds have
been budding this Long Vacation.

)L

26 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

K. C. C, Jan. 20, 1845.

I am grateful for your last letter, and I have thought
about its contents perhaps as much as I need. I have
dwelt on many of the points most to be considered, and
I see one or two new features of hopefulness . . . though
I feel disappointment in thinking that I am to continue
in a state of neediness burdensome to your finances,
instead of being able (as I used to expect I should by this
time) to make a livelihood for myself here or at Eton.
It is a great thing that I should be blessed with a father
so courageous and generous, and that there should be
such unselfish unanimity among your other children in
wishing to do the utmost for the one who has hitherto
been the most indulged and the most prosperous. In
fact the plan for my future education, as now taken up
by all of you, is equivalent to a most splendid gift— it
would be an unwholesome kind of pride that would
make one shrink from accepting it. I am the more
hopeful about this choice of a profession from re-
marking that I have been getting rather more energetic
this last term and this vacation, though still wasteful
of time, dilatory, and self-indulgent. I believe good
example has had something to do with it, but one thing
is that I have done myself good by encountering pretty
firmly the crusty difficulties of high Algebra and Trigo-
nometry, a process of good discipline. After surds ami
cosines and logarithms it is hardly possible that ' deter-
minate remainders ' or bankruptcy laws can be at all too
thorny. And I think with some complacency on the
disposition I find among my acciuaintances to trust me^
which is a disposition not commonly entertained towards
people I know here who would make ten times better

i845] CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 27

pleaders than I could. I should be unusually well off for
associates and even intimate allies in London. A ^ood
club and the London Library are inestimable resources
— the Temple Gardens and Westminster Cloisters are
places I already love better than any spot in Cambridge.
Few^ people would appreciate more than I should the
great advantage of being in the midst of all that is
stirring, amongst new books, and varied topics, and
a large assortment of faces and voices. The one grave
stumbling-block is the insuperable difficulties in the way
of getting fresh air. A law student lives from 9.0 to
5.0 in his tutor s chambers, then dines. . . I should like
boat-work (many lawyers pull in the eight-oars of the
river clubs), only it would be incompatible with regular
reading (which is not the case at Cambridge). I have
inquired, and find that my expenses in London for the
nine months could hardly be less than ^300, of which
;^ioo goes to the tutor and about ;^30 in law books.
It is a great comfort to think that a chancery barrister
has no circuit expenses. You know it costs ;^ioo to
obey the call to the Bar. . .

I do not suppose I should get any employment worth
mentioning till I w^as thirty-six or so. I cannot say
I feel any mounting hopes of success ; nor yet any
despondency w^hen I count up the chances of failure.
I do believe that my boyish ambition to get that Essay
prize of Hawtrey's has taken the gloss off any natural
eagerness of ambition that I may have started with.
I mean that I do not hope or fear very keenly in any
speculations as to future success. Only I should rather
like to be Foreign Secretary.

My valued friend Campbell, who has encouraged me
and straightened me more than any one else, and knows

28 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

my mind and has studied it more than almost any one
else, will be here to-morrow, and I shall ask him what
chance he thinks I should have of earning bread by
pleading- in courts of equity. He is quite bent on my
going to Eton, and yet knows the objections I have
to that alternative. If I go there, I am quite bound to
make endeavours as a reformer ; my convictions as to
the alterations desirable there being ver^^ positive, very
strong, and pretty well known : he and others my well-
wishers do me the honour of believing that I might act
there effectually upon those convictions. I hardly think
I could, and if I could not I should be in a very false
position. And I think there are heavy temptations for
an Eton master towards love of money, gormandizing,
jealousy, intrigue and imposture. And yet I should like
to be forming an ingenuous mind instead of blackening
a mischievous parchment. Pupils might give a man
more happiness than clients. But the truth, is I distrust
the purity of the motives which have this long time past
swayed me towards a wish to be an Eton master.
I cannot, without needless fidgetiness, entertain any
doubts as to the healthiness and manliness of that choice
of profession which I have now resolved upon. 1 do
not care to settle a point in my mind so stiffly as to
consider it a close (]ucstion. Till October I must be
mainly in King's, and there is no need to decide irre-
versibly. But I intend at present to get my name
entered at an Inn and at a Club, and I shall have no
hesitation in saying, if I am asked, that I mean to read
for the Chancery Bar. I am reading as an introduction
the Life of vSir Samuel Romilly, to sec how he got on
and how he came to make himself an historical name.
And so may the only wise God favour our enterprise.

i845] THE BAR. APPOINTMENT AT ETON 29

K. C. C, Feb. 20, 1845.

I choose the Inner Temple in preference to Lincoln's
Inn, the Middle Temple holdings out no advanta<i;-e to
an University man. Interviews with Campbell, in which
he has broached a most thoughtful and deep view of
what I ought to do (in a way that showed he had studied
the question with extraordinary care and interest), have
made me reconsider the prospect, and I mean to
continue the speculations he forced on me — when I am
more free to think. Just this week (my last Scholars
week) I am immersed in ' Naval Tactics,' on which
I have to write an essay for my inexorable Society '
by Saturday. When a Fellow (23rd), I shall have more
time. . .

My Tripos Verses, according to old custom, fetched
me a pair of gloves ! They have attracted some atten-
tion and done something towards dissipating some of
the errors w^hich Campbell has taught me to battle
against.

K. C. C, March 11, 1845.

. . . To-day came a letter from Hawtrey inviting me
to take a mastership at Eton at once, and requiring an
answer by the 20th. . .

He (Campbell) forms his opinions very slowly, and
reasons out every point with the utmost carefulness.
And then he knows what London Is, and he knov^
enough about Eton masters to understand what I say
about that kind of life. Well — in two methodical con-
versations he has expounded his view of my studies to

^ The 'Apostles.'

30 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

this effect : ' We agree that the object is to promote
' God's glory, as the work of this life and the next. We

* must do it by using to the utmost the talents for which
' we must give account. Your faculties (special ones)
' make you peculiarly fit to influence other minds by
' personal intercourse — it is what you say you have done
' at Eton and what you do here. You have often talked ot
' preaching, putting yourself in the position of a preacher,
' and your turn of mind fits you much more for directly

* advancing the common cause of Christianity in this way
' than by any other public display. You say yourself
' that you think if you are fitted for anything, it is for
' guiding the minds of people younger than yourself If
' your faculty is that of training or instructing, it seems
' clear that you ought not to go into a sphere of life in
' which this faculty cannot be used.' . .

I begin to see that there was some cowardice in my
resolution taken six weeks ago. I do distinctly feel
that if I have a gift it is the power of gaining influence
over the minds of people more ignorant than myself,
partly owing to my being able to enter into other
people's interests. . . I put the question on this
ground : Is it not my vocation to teach boys ? If so,
must I not encounter all temptations incident to that life
with faith and courage } I answer in the afiirmative.
But I will not act upon this judgement without having
yours.

K. C. C, March 15, 1845.

I see very clearly that I have no right to become one
of Hawtrcy's assistants unless I resolve to do all I can
for every pupil. I have not tlie least reason to suspect
myself in the way of donnishness with pupils. 1 am

1845] APPOINTMENT AT ETON 31

rather afraid I should be too fimlh'ar in school, where
one is amonji^ stran<>;ers who recjuire something- of that
exercise of discipline which a rei^^iment or a ship's crew
reciuire. IMy dilhculties would, no doubt, be with those
weak minds in which the will is feeble and the conduct
regulated by impressions instead of choices. . .

On the other hand, you do not set before me any
detailed plan of doing good as a lawyer. Of course it
is important that men of active general sympathies should,
in a layer of society in which the understanding is highly
educated, maintain the position of men living for an
unseen Master and imitating a Divine Pattern. For
a laymen in London the precept about ' confessing
Christ ' must be translated into a command to guard his
lips, so that in all discussions on newspaper topics or
personalities he bears witness for Him who once for all
made it mankind's task to tread down sin and achieve
peace. Wilberforce s position in London was inestimably
valuable ; Gladstone's is very valuable. But this is to be
observed — they were drawn into that position by certain
tangible duties, they had a definite mission. Now with
me this would not be so ; any influence I might have on
other people's thoughts would be merely incidental.
I cannot go to London saying that my business is to
go about in clubs and Law-Courts to show folks that it
is possible for a man of letters and a reformer to be
religious. If I go there it will be to live a sober and
manly life under severe mental discipline, denying
myself the intellectual luxuries I could command at
Cambridge, for the purpose of gaining an honest live-
lihood ; of course intending to avail myself of any
opportunity that might present itself for helping the
progress of Christianity. I never looked many years

32 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

ahead when I was making up my mind to go to London.
I was taken up with thinking how safe I should be from
Cambridge sloth or Eton excitement, what vigorous
manly work my mind was to be doing, how hardy and
quiet I should be. I begin to fear that I should be
barren there — that I should be in want of those really
intimate allies who, actively or passively, have done me
so much good. I see how difficult it w^ould be to avoid
intercourse with men in whose presence I should be apt
to make compromises and concessions. On looking
closer I think my life there would be more worldly
than my recent life has been at Cambridge, more
worldly also than my life would be as an Eton Master.

K. C. C, Apnl 24, 25, 1845.

I am unusually well. Our boat is almost an absorbing
interest this week, because of the races. We have
achieved a complete conquest over the unkind pre-
judices of our elders in the College, who at first threw
some cold and not very clean water on the project of
the revival of the boat club. Wednesday was to be
the first race, and we practised at 7.30 in the morning,
and then had to race twelve hours afterwards. And
greatly rapt I was about it all day, thinking about
it almost as keenly and cjualmishly as I used to about
one of our national struggles at football. We had to
start last but one, because we had so recently entered.
It was the wildest scramble — we had to change our place
at the last moment, but started advantageously. You
know we are not allowed to look on the bank (much
less at the pursuing boat), but keep our eyes straight
aft and think about every stroke : nothing could be

1845] KING'S BOAT. MAYNOOTII GRANT 33

wilder than pullinqr thus with a dozen unseen partisans
on the bank shoutinn;- to us ' Go at them ! ' as if we were
hulldoo;s set at a bull. In about 200 yards one mi^rht
infer from the noises that we were close upon the quarter
of the Emmanuel boat. Going round a corner, with not
light enough to steer by, we found our oars digging
into the sedge, and the boat going one-sided ; one or
two lookers-on holloaing to our steerer (a very young
but marvellously cool-headed being) to steer out (to give
us room). Luckily he disobeyed, and persisted in making
for their inside ; so in a few strokes more we were
bumping them most decisively, and stopped and hoisted
our flag, having had not enough work to give us a
breathing — the Emmanuel eight looking sulky at being
caught so early by a six-oar.

We were down this morning, and find ourselves im-
proved : one feels quite a professional interest in fulfilling
all that our jockey has taught us ; and the improvement
in health resulting from all this careful and vigorous life
is a great reward for the surrender I make of puddings
and parties and conversational walks. I am beginning
to feel much less a ' man of letters,' and to look upon
my merely indoor bookish acquaintances as incomplete
people.

And this too will pass away — this second boyhood
now flourishing in Kings, this interest in the state of
my sinews and wind. All our crew will be broken up,
and I shall be thinking I have lost for ever some spring
of existence ; and yet, if I live at all, I have no doubt
I shall hit upon something else.

This day last week we were getting up a petition
among B.A.s and Undergraduates in favour of the
Alaynooth grant. There had been one previously got

D

34 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

up against it. Milnes ^ (a man connected with our
generation) wrote to Hallam ^ asking him to start a
counter-petition, as he thought it would be valuable.
Hallam was rather queered (it not being in his line to
do anything, so conspicuous), and came to me to be en-
couraged. I persuaded him to do it : he wrote a very
terse, philosophical and original document, to which, at
my request, he added a sentence. In twenty-four hours
we had nearly 200 signatures, many more than we
expected — the Trinity Bachelors (who are all more or
less noted and powerful men) signed it in a body ; three
of my King's friends did the same. It ran up to 250 by
Monday morning. I do not know what has become of
it since. It was a very successful attempt, and has been
agreeably followed by a spirited debate, in which Hallam
and two or three others beat the No-Popery men in
argument, and quite advanced the standard of opinion.
It ended by a majority of ninety to thirty-nine in favour
of the grant. I like the whole affair (as it goes on in
Parliament), as a signal triumph of the best educated
classes over the half educated. In truth. Peel is now
merely an exponent of the opinions that are prevalent
amongst the most intelligent London circles, and one
must have done with his history.

K. C. C, May 19, 1845.

I think death is all the more terrible the less we talk
about it — for instance, it never seems a more awful thing
to me than when I think of it in connexion with one of
those youthful associates (such as members of our boat
crew), with whom one never by any chance speaks of

• Lord Houghton. ^ II. II. Hallam.

1845] DECIDES TO GO TO ETON 35

dyin^ as a thino;- they have anything to do with per-
soually. On the other hand, in thinkinj^ of soldiers
death is not terrible, because it is so completely one of
their properties or necessary elements in all calculations.
1 feel just now a great inclination to be a soldier.

(That is to say, I did yesterday ; but to-day (May 20)
I have forgotten all about it.) I got up at the right time
this morning, which has made me happy ; and I have
had, as a substitute for a walk, another spell at our
Fitzwilliam pictures, which was agreeable. . .

K. C. C, July 12, 1845.

I came to the conclusion that I might come back here
for my degree (the railway bringing the two places so
near each other), and that I might face the difficulty about
the Norrisian Lectures^ by applying at once to head-
quarters. So I wrote to the Bishop of Lincoln a con-
cise and plain statement of the case, asking whether he
would be content w^ith a certificate of my having passed
the Theological Examination (which cannot be till next
year), and dispense wath the other despicable formula.
A day or two ago I had his answer : he said he would
* in my case ' do without the Norrisian Professor's cer-
tificate. I onlv wish I had WTung: from him a g^eiieral
relaxation of that yoke, or that my case could as a
precedent tend to rescue others from that formality
which one would suppose the really useful examination
might supersede. I am presently going to write to
Hawtrey to say so — wherefore I conjecture that I shall
be at Miss Edgar's in the middle of September. Rumours

* The Norrisian Professor's certificate was required by Bisiiops of
candidates for Holy Orders.

D 2

36 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

are rife about Abraham's entire departure : if he goes,
they will perhaps expect me as ' boots ' to take his
policeman's beat in College — a thing plainly impossible,
which I should refuse summarily and scornfully. How-
ever, I hope they are not really going to let their most
high-minded officer leave them thus (from mere stress
of uncongeniality). Birch says he gets somewhat tised
to the listening to 270 boys on a Friday (ninety, three
times in the day each) saying their lessons ; of course
there is a certain natural provision for callousness. The
people in the Andes get larger breasts to make them
breathe in the thin mountain air : I also shall get by the
law of adaptation some hitherto undreamt-of power of
abstracting my mind — letting it think at will while my
ears endure the same page of Greek grammar thirty
times repeated. I am going into an abyss of drudgery —
I must float upon the hope of some success in perhaps
one pupil out of fifty — the hope, that before my
time is out I may rejoice in having turned out of my
pupil-room perhaps one brave soldier or one wise
historian or one generous legislator or one patient
missionary. . .

I find myself frequently reading books or parts of
books irrelevant to my essay, but to which I am guided
by the eager search for facts I am obliged to make.
I am beginning rapidly to people all that blank of 1,000
years between the sixth and the sixteenth centur)^, in
which hitherto I have only had a few scattered facts and
quasi -facts to serve as landmarks in the wilderness. . .
Though I am set to write only about the gradual soften-
ing and loosening of I^^uropean slavery, I find everything
almost that history supplies helping mc to an under-
standing of that inexiiaustible subject of which this is

1845] LEAVING CAMBRIDGE 37

only a slice — the influence of Christianity upon human
nature. As there are other men writing who are quite
competent, I do not think I shall get the money offered
as a reward ; but anyhow it is a good hit for me— it
satisfies a want.

This is my last good hearty draught of literature ;
my castle-building seven or eight years ago always ran
in the direction of a merely literary book-eating, book-
making life ; and now the wish returns. I suppose if
I was a Frenchman I could get in their institutions
a sure livelihood as a journeyman history-monger —
history is a profession there. Here, as the young people
don't take up Ranke and Palgrave for their degree,
there is no demand for a coach in that line of business ;
but see if I don't make the smaller fry at Eton write
me holiday essays about St. Louis or Simon de Mont-
fort or Charlemagne. If Haw^trey would but let me
alone a little w^hile longer I w^ould come to his great
verse-mill almost a learned man instead of a smatterer.
He is perpetrating a great anomaly, I think.

K. C. C, Sept. 3, 1845.

I am taking my last walks and closing up one or two
trains of associations, not with much sorrow, though
I am giving up a great deal, and going from a place
where I have met with more justice and kindness and
helpful friendliness than I thought a place could furnish.
There are many things I might have done here, particu-
larly mathematics, geology, and some deeper scholarship.
My education is incomplete, but still it is immeasurably
advanced since I left school and since I won freedom
by the Craven.

38 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Eton College, Sept. i6, 1845.

I arrived here late last night, and was rather pleased
to find that there was to be no seven o'clock lesson.
I had some trouble about finding- out in the morning
what room there was for me, but soon after eight I found
myself lodged in a little cell with a host of strange young
people, and after some waiting I ascertained how many
of them belonged to me. Saying by heart is a tiresome
and unsatisfactory kind of teaching- work — but, drudgery
as it is, I find in a few minutes that it requires a constant
vioral ^^ovt^ the effort to be just, to deal even-handedly.
It took an hour. I met Cookesley and broke fast w^ith
him.

At eleven I went into Chambers, and tried for the first
time the seediness of standing there with the other
journeymen, talking. I found myself soon afterwards
in my place bellowing to forty-five book-bearing bipeds,
of whom I found one to be an intelligent being, and
expect to discover more. The time went very rapidly —
so I suppose I did not find it a bore. And so much
standing must be more healthy than much sitting. The
worst of it is I am so badly off at home for a sitting-
room, whereas the bedroom with its empty dressing-room
attached is very good.

Eton College, Sept. 30, 1845.

1 am very well, but my voice is weak for this bellow-
ing ; it weighs heavily in the scale of my uncertainties.
The noise of 200 boys and four masters in the Upper
School is so great that it is impossible for those at one
end to hear what goes on at the other, and therefore
the instruction conveyed can be but fragmentary, and
the great bulk of the division is learning nothing.

1845] FIRST WEEKS AT ETON 39

I think myself lucky if I can interest half a dozen near
nciiihhours and cn(^i<;-e their attention. If I could but
iiave proper opportunities, I am sure I have a dozen who
would learn a good deal. . .

I am not sure yet whether I am of any use here.
I am told that is not a right way of putting the
question.

Eton College, Nov. 5, 1845.

I have been an usher seven weeks : my juvenility is
a fault mending every day, according to William Pitt's
notion ; nor do I find my mind stagnating as it is
generally thought ushers' minds do. As long as I find
fresh interests germinating I have a right to conclude
that I have not altogether mistaken my vocation.

Sometimes I get encouragement in school, observing
eagerness and inquisitiveness in some of the young
people's faces — only perhaps w^hat I see is but an eager-
ness for display and competition. Anyhow, it is their
light-heartedness which makes the intercourse with them
agreeable. On cold mornings w^hen they are dispirited,
discontented and dull, I pity them, and also I pity myself.
And I cannot help fidgeting when I find myself dis-
tracted in the midst of investigations by talking, &c.,
which I must make perpetual digressions to rebuke and
check — after all, it is but rubbing the blood off Bluebeard's
key. As soon as I silence one battery another opens,
and they force me to quarrel with them, though I believe
they would really like to live in peace and on terms of
amity. Nature never intended me for a disciplinarian,
much less for a martinet ; rather for a * guerrlllero.' I am
unable to browbeat or intimidate. In fact it is a difficult
problem to solve — how to work mechanically without

40 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

acting- a part — how to work in a business-like and
natural way according to the laws of one's own char-
acter, and yet keep up the conventional system of
strict and summar^^ jurisdiction. Whether, with all the
pains I take to broach facts and establish distinctions,
I am teaching them anything, I often doubt ; in a few
cases I fancy I see glimmerings of improvement.

I am reading stoutly by myself, forgetting my higher
classics, but getting general views which will put them
in a new light whenever I return to them. I find
Abraham a valuable ally, because he is a keen student,
and fairly meets one's thoughts face to face, taking pains
not to misunderstand them ; likewise he is a very high-
minded and almost enthusiastic man.

Eton College,
May 17, 1846.

I had till Monday felt very cheerful and confident
about my prospects of Eton work. Now I am some-
what discouraged. We are all so hopeless about getting
Hawtrey to do the right thing, i.e. increase the staff
adequately. Again, my boys make me idle, my time
is frittering away. Ten of them are not enough to fill
my hands, yet am I losing all habits of self-improvement.

And I am beginning also to be dismayed at the
amount of evil. It suddenly strikes me that this place
is not only *a little world,' as the saying is, but 'the
world ' — i. e. one of our three enemies. I mean an Eton
boy is eminently a slave of the world ; and an Eton
master is in nearly as great danger. I force myself to
think of the text: 'Consider Him who endured such
contradiction of sinners, lest ye be weary and faint in
your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood,' &c.

1846] FIRST WEEKS AT ETON 4t

After all I am more In doubt than In anxiety ; yet the
cares of professional manhood are come suddenly on me
this week in a comj:)lcx form.

Eton Collfx.f:,

May, 1846.

I had a fig^ht yesterday with some ninety Fourth-Form
in one of the extra school-times, when all the new ones
are worked in Greek grammar ^ I conquered them at
the cost of two lives and a few seriously wounded. Since,
I have got leave to split the ninety into two halves,
which wall give me double w^ork in point of time ; but
forty or so are not too many for my voice and eyes.

Misanthropical feelings are engendered by their w^ant
of order ; but I see one or two virtuous and rational ones
who are my friends and fellow-soldiers, and their
existence makes me very easily reconciled with human
nature at large, inasmuch as I persevere in an old habit
of idealizing, and live in the faith that my best Fourth -
Form are most noble, most generous, most kind — as
virtuous as men, without men s pride and know^ingness,
as interesting as women, without women's tlmorousness
and artifice.

Eton College,
Aug. 6, 1846.

By help of a small telescope, the most happy purchase
I ever made, I saw the play of the batter perfectly wuth
the bowling and wicket-keeping. The same glass gives
me countless new pleasures in looking at views, and
I wonder I have never been told to get one before.
Henceforth I shall no more go about without it than
without my spectacles.

^ This institution, called ' Library,' existed till 1861.

42 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [J

AN.

Eton College,
Jan. 13, 1847.

After breakfast I started, on a quiet, dull day, for a long
walk. I asked the way to Abbotsford, and w^ent by the
carriage -road. It appears that one ought to go across
country by the Rhymer s Glen ; but I had no guide.
The first good thing I came to was Melrose Bridge,
two miles from the inn — a beautiful view of Tweedside,
which made me fairly feel that I was for the first time
in my life in a poetical region — a place of compound
attractions — not pleasant only to the eye because favoured
by nature, but gratifying to the mind because connected
with human thoughts and experiences. I did not know
how soon I should get to the house. When I had turned
from the Edinburgh road I kept looking about with my
spyglass for it, afraid of missing the first view^ of it.
I was very curious, in good spirits, glad to be alone,
not at all sentimental or fanciful, vexed that I had not
got up Scott's life lately. For many years I used to wish
to see two places — first, Niagara ; secondly, Abbotsford.
And the second best spot in the world, as I used to count
it, was close by. The plantations interested me as I came
near them. They are hardly young enough now to look
formal. Men were sawing timber near the house.

The entrance to the grounds is commonplace, the
colour and masonry also — mere common reddish-brown
stone, faced with grey stone, just like the common
houses in Galashiels. In architecture it is certainly rather
original, but not good — a great many doors, no regular
main entrance, that I could see ; the situation not good
— no particular view from it. The builtling too small to
have towers, &c. I was admitted by a small door and

1847] ADDOTSFORD AND MELROSE 43

mean staira\se to the first floor, and was straightway in
'his' ch'ni nor- room, .-^jj the pert I^nollsh woman-servant
called it. . . Then the armoury- here I was vexed with
the want of appropriateness. I should have wished a
man like Scott to have a museum of things Scottish
and mediaeval ; but what had he to do with Polynesian
war-clubs, Chinese matchlocks, Persian shields, &c. ? It
looked too like a love of homicide. If he had carried
out the principle he would have put alongside of the
Scotch thumbscrews (which, of course, he was quite right
to get) a model of a rack and of a guillotine, &c., &c. So
in the drawing-room I was offended by the remarkable
Chinese paper — a thing quite out of character with old
British cabinets and chairs. After all, Abbotsford can
hardly be better than Strawberry Hill in point of poetry.
The library was the fourth room ; these four e7t suite
take up the south front. The library is a delightful
room, quite worthy of so great a litterateur — nobly
furnished, barring the gaslight. His study, with its
gallery and (almost secret) communication with the
dressing-room upstairs, looked very like a place of hard,
solitary work ; it has a double window to keep out
sound and draught; only three chairs, for fear visitors
should be adhesive. Scott's chair is a comfortable great
easy-chair, which I was surprised at. . . I went away
with my second or manly estimate of Scott (which, on
reading Carlyle's, superseded my boyish estimate) de-
cidedly confirmed by what I had seen. It is almost
enough that he so highly valued the handsome gifts of
George IV — enough, I mean, to show that he was a
regular man of the world. Wordsworth and Shelley
and Tennyson have lived more like poets, after all. . .
I was shown over a factory : water-power, hand-looms.

44 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

shawls, plaids, twills and tweeds — fine woollen fabrics. . •
I did not feel this time ashamed of myself as a lounger
when looking- at the labours of the factory folks : they
work eleven or tw^elve hours a day, and so do I. There-
fore I had a right, on one of my holidays, to go and
look on. I also am a labourer now — and * labour is
sacred.'. .

Next morning after breakfast I saw the Abbey, happily
without a guide, clambering about therefore to explore
for myself . . But I don't like ruins so much as other
buildings. The laceration and corruption pain me. Who
would like a ruined picture ? Who likes a corrupt Greek
play so well as he does a perfect one ? Whence comes
the preference for ruined buildings ? If a building is
a work of art it should be unmutilated. Nevertheless
the tracery of a window without glass is abstractedly
more beautiful than that of a window with glass. And
a clean greensward, such as one walks on at Melrose,
is more beautiful than a pavement. . .

I spent two hours in the Minster ^ (N. B. — This was
a good way of keeping my birthday.) It is all that
I expected, and more, for I had no notion there was
such a beautiful thing in the island as that most perfect,
faultless Chapterhouse. The fires have not done much
harm, and some good ; the fire in the choir, which
destroyed the good okl woodwork deplorably, brought
about the opening of the crypt below and the donation
of a firstrate organ. You know that, besides an unrivalled
display of old stained glass, which I examined with my
spyglass — a whole group of new pleasures — York is
honoured by a stone choir-screen containing niches with
the English kings from the Conqueror to the beloved

' At York.

I

1

1847] YORK MINSTER. PUPILS 45

Founder. How lucky it is that the kin^s of T^ngland
were not canonized ! If they had been saints they would
have been destroyed. As it is, poor Henry VI's face is
miserably marred ; the authenticity of the earlier faces
is, I suppose, very slio;ht. . . Hut of course as Henry VI
was alive at the time his statue is trustworthy. I was
surprised and delighted, and cjuite moved, to see what
a sweet face it was — not pusillanimous, but innocent ;
not sheepish, but kind; not like what the plaster casts
one sees in King-smen's rooms make him, but like what
one would wish and expect him to be. The Edinbiirgk
Review once called him ' an unprincipled driveller.' This
statue does not drivel a bit. It is clear that he was not
unprincipled. He made a great effort for education, and
he had Lollards burnt. I hope he had more volition in
the former than in the latter act. I would have gone
out of my way to see this most pleasing image (chin
damaged, however, with a chip) of my benefactor and
taskmaster,

Eton, 1847.

I take very little pleasure in my elder pupils, and
I think of resorting, if I can, to a Sixth-Form colleger,
Bradshaw\ whom I like. I read next to nothing by
myself; I wish I could. But as it is I am absolutely
neglecting about half my pupils, except as regards what
is done in class. My school division, which used to be
dead weight or vexation, is on the whole more inte-
resting to me than pupils. Many of them have been
with me a year, most of them not less than six or seven
months. This does not often happen. The young

* Henry Bradshaw, University Librarian at Cambridge.

46 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

people in turn-down collars are ten times more agree-
able than the louts in tail coats.

Eton, 1847.

Maine ^ arrived after the young- Lieutenant's departure,
and stayed with me till Tuesday morning, going to
vSt. George's, lionizing Eton thoroughly, and exploring
the Park as far as a cold grey day would let us. W^e
talked together for some twenty -four hours nett. He
told me much that I wanted to hear of London gossip,
political and literary — lifting for a few days the curtain
which hides that great glittering world from me. He is
inexhaustibly lively and powerful ; somewhat impetuous
still ; but, thanks to marriage and hydropathy, more kind
and patient and philanthropic. He and I went through
several hard subjects in the old Cambridge way, in that
method of minute comparison of opinions without argu-
ment which I believe to be peculiar to the small intel-
lectual aristocracy of Cambridge. So that those three
days have lifted me more than six weeks of mere
reading. It is this systematic talk with a well-educated
reasoner which I am always wishing for. . . A school-
master must needs get dogmatic or weak in faith or
both unless he has some such intercourse with equals
or superiors — and it is of infmite importance that they
be men of his own age.

July 31, 1847.

[Castel, after missing a train.] I mustered up my
German and asked for an hotel ; found one close to the
station ; stopped outside the door just long enough to

* Sir Henry Sumner Maine.

,847] TOUR IN GERMANY 47

get up out of Murray's Handbook of Travel Talk the
phrases for gettinn- ,1 bcch-oom, coffee, &c. ; performed
these evolutions, found myself in a very j^ood hotel where
there were no vestic>;-cs of compatriots, and so felt myself
to be really a stranger in a forcii^n land. . . Being- appre-
hensive of fraud in the bill, I thoug-ht I had better study
the coinage. So I gave vent to a request. ' Change
me a Napoleon, please ! ' Having got the new coins,
I read their legends, held them up to the waiter,
ascertained their names and relations to one another.
It was one of the pleasantest discoveries I ever made
to learn that a florin and a gulden were of the
same value.

I then went through the new evolutions of ascertaining
what was the first train in the morning, arranging the
times for being called and breakfasting. . . Everything
went right, and when I was seated in the 6.30 a.m.
train, going through a nice country, with a very pretty
view of Wiesbaden, I felt (all unwashed and unkempt
though I was) more lively and traveller-like than
I had before. The adventure at Castel was, in fact,
a good stimulant. When I got to Frankfort at 8.0
I invaded the Gepacks- Expedition or luggage office —
found no one there, seized my two companions, carried
them to a fly, holding out my ticket all the while, drove
to the Hotel de Russie, where I knew I should find
Scott ; dressed w^hile they w^ere breakfasting, compared
notes, and found that he had had difficulties and em-
barrassments too, all arising from the hurry we were in
about the train. We then had a very pleasant run on
rails to Heidelberg ; the line, without cuttings, embank-
ments or bridges, skirted at a short distance a line of
hills lying on the east the whole way. For several miles

48 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

in the neighbourhood of Darmstadt the meadows were
beautifully wooded, the villages frequent and comely,
the hills varied in contour, the whole thing ver>^ rich,
cheerful and pretty. In due time we came to a broad
opening in the hills, where the Neckar came down to
the Rhine.

Eton, Oct. 20, 1847.

I was out of bed a good deal yesterday, but very busy
all the time. To-day I am quite at rest comparatively
in my Cambridge great chair, and I think you will be
glad to see in my hand a statement of my release from
an imprisonment of five days. Immunity from headache
makes bed a happy, active place for me. I have been
free from school government, and doing nothing but
teach, government being carried on for me. I am a bad
governor, but I am getting to be a good teacher : I think
I like teaching better than any other employment, pro-
vided I am learning at the same time, which has been
the oise lately.

I have had very kindly domestic interviews in my
bedroom with pupils, one or two at a time ; and though
my throat makes me often think of resigning, yet my
recent thoughts run upon the blessing of my present
life and the great loss I should sustain if I had to go
away from it prematurely.

Eton, March 3, 1848.

The Modern History Professorship ^ is soon going to
be closed up : it will not be open again in my lifetime.
No great matter. It will probably be given to Grote,

' Vacant by the death of Prof, Smyth, who was succeeded by Sir James
Stephen, K.C.B.

1848] HISTORY PROFESSORSHIP 49

a brother of (jcorge Grote the historian : this will be
a very good appointment. I should never be man
enough for a place like Cambridge ; but at a second-
rate University 1 should make a good history professor,
as things go.

June 4, 1848.

I do not feel at present inclined to stay at Eton, if
I can get any other income w^hich will allow of my
paying my premium. I can do hardly anything as
a teacher or as a ruler of boys.

June 5, 1848,

Abraham lends me his schoolroom by way of help :
it enables me to be heard, but it has countervailing
disadvantages which have given me great trouble. The
task of keeping my mob in a state of quiet attentiveness
when their blood is warm is a task beyond my powers ;
it is comparatively easy in the cool morning. I get
sometimes absolutely sick of setting punishments — quar-
relling so much with my subjects ; but in the pupil-room
there is teaching, which by itself I like. . .

I look at the plasterers and carpenters now working
here, and envy^ them their weekly wages ; for all my
shoutings and questionings and mortifications, and all
the ill-will I have to contract by punishing, I have not
received a farthing.

50 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Mav

Eton, May 26, 1849.

Last Sunday I went to Church in the tent\ of which
you have heard. I was admitted as one of the choir,
and hope to sing better to-morrow. . . I have been rather
idle this week with pupils, busy with my sixty boys in
school, who give more pleasure than my pupils.

Eton, Oct. 27, 1849.

These rides (the last I had was to Beaconsfield, where
Burke lived) make me feel that this is an interesting
district The extension of my topographical knowledge
since I first lived at Eton corresponds with the expansion
of my other interests. I find enough here now to con-
stitute a home. My lecture^ cost me about twelve hours^
hard work, throwing overboard two ' private business
lessons, and making the next day, which should have
been pretty clear, a day of very hard work. It did me
eood, no doubt ; writing makes a correct man. I had to
deal with a subject of which I knew so litde in detail
(though full of general views of it) that I was obliged
to be particularly cautious-and yet I was so moved by
some thoughts that had been swarming at odd times for
some weeks that I felt myself lifted up a little, so as to be
at the time of delivery fearless of criticism and regardless
of my audience. I lectured on the geological books of
Hugh Miller, the self-taught Scotsman, now one of the
leaders of the Free Church. His last publication is so
recent that I am, I believe, the first of its reviewers.

• Th<= temporary building used for service wl>ile the alterations of thc
CoUcRc Chapel were procccdicig.

» On geology ; one of several lectures delivered at Windsor.

i85o] LECTURES AT WINDSOR 51

I observe that Huckland is goinjr to lecture upon it at
Oxford ; so tliat I hit upon something- evidently worth
notice. As to tlie final cause of this lecture of mine,
I merely wished to pay a personal attention to my neigh-
bours, and to let them know me in some phase of my
character or other. If 1 am asked again I shall be
inclined to repeat the experiment — as it does me good,
whether it is of use to my hearers or not. . .

Eton, Jan. 14, 1850.

You should try hard to g"et hold of the Erasers for
December and January. Read Carlyle's paper about the
West Indian negroes, and then read Mill's answer. One
preaches a ' gospel of work,' the other a ' gospel of
leisure ' — both wrong. The right gospel is a gospel
of probation. It is the most notable bit of polemics
I have seen lately. I meditate lecturing at Windsor on
slavery.

Eton, Ash Wednesday, 1850.

I have no time to think about politics : only I smile
scornfully and proudly at the breakdown of the Pro-
tectionists, all the more gratifying because it is caused
by the sterling patriotism and unselfishness of many
who call themselves Protectionists, and who just now
are behaving admirably ; e. g. Lord Castlereagh, Lord
Yarborough, &c.

I have read modern English history as much as most
people of my age, and I am convinced that in no genera-
tion since the Long Parliament met has there been so
much virtue and wisdom amongst our legislators as there
is now.

E 2

I'XL

52 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

I have had as much stupidity and idleness as usual,
and rather more cheating, but no malice : most of the
young people very amiable and flexible — a good many
enlivened by my philosophical puzzles, which I set every
week (questions or problems in physics, &c.), with the
talk thereupon. This brings out intelligence in half
a dozen boys who cannot write poetry, and it supplies
phenomena for a dozen more who can ; and the rest,
if they do not quite follow the reasoning, smile as they
look on, and are at least aware of their ignorance. My
air-pump, microscope, &c., are daily inquired after : when
they come we shall have pneumatic recreations now and
then, and in May we may look at flowers and insects
and learn something about them.

Did you hear of my being half invited to Rugby to
be second to Goulburn ? Catch me going ! N.B. — The
negotiations never really began.

Warminster, April ■^, 1850.

I tried hard to get up some health last week, and for the
last three days at Romsey seemed to be succeeding. On
Sunday I went, by help of a railway, with ten miles
walking altogether, to and from Hursley, where I heard
Keble preach a better sermon than any I ever read of
his. Nothing could be more pastoral : he has not that
Oxford voice and tone which one gets so tired of, but
a thick utterance, such as I can fancy Moses had — the
speech of a man both meek and brave, who has just
come from the Presence-Chamber. He spoke like a man
who had been just giving way to grief, piusing some-
times in the middle of a sentence, though not using any
warm emotional language nor discoursing on any painful
subject. His church is very perfect. L. D., I remember,

i

i85o] JOHN KEBLE. SCIENCE AT ETON 53

was rather sad when we saw a Roman church near
Malvern, beciiuse our communion had no such holy
places, so well built and furnished. I thought when
I was in Hursley church that she would like to be
there, and would have no reason to envy the Romans.

Eton, Nov. 1850.

H. Dupuis announces his wish to be Provost of King's.
He is not likely to beat Okes. If either goes I shall gain
a step in school — get into the Remove. I cannot face
the expense of changing houses too. But to get out of
the Fourth Form might prolong my life a year or two.

My Fifth -Form boys are generally so idle, frivolous
and undisciplined, and do so much harm to the young
ones, that I get ill some days of sickness of heart ; but
then the place and the work provide remedies, some-
times an eager open-eyed listener sitting as long as
I like to hear me read him poetry or translate Greek
or Latin verse to him, sometimes a piece of unexpected
industry or taste, sometimes a piece of good conduct or
rather of high virtue, forgiveness, humility or the like,
sometimes an unanimous burst of inquisitiveness in a
small and youthful class, or an impromptu vote of thanks
for some interesting story or out-of-the-way information.
Last night I had a happy party of small boys receiving
shocks and sparks from an electric machine ; and though
it all ended in breakages and a headache (not my head,
but Scott's, who operated), yet it was a successful affair.
Indeed, one can make Eton a palace of art, science and
nature — anything but a Christian Church. Yet there are
a few children of the ' free woman ' even here, dwelling in
the tents of Kedar : and I feel that they are too strong
for the mocking Ishmaelites.

54 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

K. C. C, Dec. i8, 1850.

Next day Barrett ^ brought two Oxford guests into
Hall and Combination Room — one was a good mathema-
tician and modest man, Spottiswoode -, who was expelled
from Eton by Hawtrey for fireworks or some such thing
— the rashest act of Ha\\i:rey's whole life, I suppose.
I was rather surprised to find myself alongside of tw^o
men who were as much in favour of the University
Commission as I am. At Eton, on Dec. 6, I was regu-
larly ' booed ' by our dons, particularly Coleridge, for
speaking in defence of the Commission. I also noted
Barrett's direct avowal of a belief that Protection is
utterly indefensible, though its abolition may or must
injure college property. This is another plain, old-
fashioned man, besides Mr. Wicksted, on the right side.

Eton, Jan. 9, 1851.

I feel as strongly as any one that the Sunday service
in a parish church, though be-musiced as much as at
this place, and filled out as far as possible, remains very
jejune and bald — and I should be glad to belong to
a nation which would allow it to be varied, enriched
and beautified. Such a clergyman as this Mr. Page
of the Broadway, a truly laborious priest, will, I hope,
be undisturl)ed in his intoning, in his preaching with
a surpHce, without a previous prayer, and in his an-
nouncing quietly the Festivals of the week.

And I hope no one in the present generation will
attempt what Bennett has disobediently struggled to
retain, l^ut I also hope that in after ages our Prayer

' Kcv. K. H. Barrett, Fellow of King's.
'' W. Spottiswoode, P.R.S.

,851] LONDON IN SPRING 55

Book will he orcatly enlarged and beautified, with
wSunday forms differing from weekday forms, and with
special services for <i^reat days, the Lessons bein^
abridt^ed at the same time.

I had a beautiful walk on Sunday in Hyde, St. James's,
and Green Park — looking at the glass shed, which is
a very mild affair at present, Lord Ellesmere's palace,
which is worth as much glass shed as would cover the
Park, and the Houses of Parliament, which from the
bridcre looked noble with a fine afternoon sun over them.
Since then I have seen another new beauty, Blackfriars
and Westminster bridges on a dark night, indicated only
by the thread of lamps, so that the curve showed all
its beauty.

But chiefly I have derived pleasure from the children
of the dirty streets — the small parties who play or dance
up the pavement of Aldersgate Street or Tottenham
Court Road, regardless of the busy passengers, and
tossing about more gaily and gracefully than any rustic
brats ; and the shoeless swarms that buzz in the dark
through the greasy lanes of Clerkenwell, where I can
hardly walk two miles an hour for fear of slipping.
I have never heard one cry for pain or anger, whereas
you can never walk through your Mill Street without
some squalling. They may be saucier in London, but
they are also brighter comelier and merrier ; they are
to country children w^hat Eton boys are to Rugby boys.

K.C. C.„Dec. 31, 1851.

I have been reading here chiefly at night — not many
hours at a time — but it is reading that tells, because it is
all to a point. It bears on my examining work\ I skip

* For the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge.

56 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec. 1851

about from book to book, sometimes dwelling- long on
a few pages, thinking over them, making questions from
them, comparing them with other views, and the like.
The moral philosophy is much less settled or fixed than
the other sciences I have to deal with (law, political
economy, modern history), and gives more trouble, as
one has to attempt a reconciliation of two opposite views,
the theory of utility and the theory of a moral sense —
a work which Mackintosh seems to have more nearly
effected than any other writer. His discourse on the
Ethical Philosophy of the last Two Centuries, edited in
1836, with a Preface by Whewell, is as readable a book
as I can find on the subject, and quite justifies his high
reputation, which I had thought groundless.

I have to read a little Roman and English Law for
the nonce, rather a low proceeding ; one's knowledge of
two such subjects thus acquired must needs be super-
ficial, but I can contrive to pick up a few points easily
handled by a beginner or amateur, and ask questions
which will make the men think sharp for a few minutes.
I went to see the big Whewell yesterday on this business,
by his request. It is altogether his creation, this Moral
Tripos — and he seemed glad to find me interested in it
— for my predecessor last year went through his functions
in a pro forma style, knowing nothing about the
questions which his colleagues, the five professors,
supplied him with. I have declined this assistance, and
Whewell thinks it will be much better for me to act
independently. I feel no great uneasiness about it. In
London I shall be able to consult Maine, whose views
will probably somewhat differ from Whewell's.

Jan. 185a] DETHNAL GREEN MEETING 57*

Eton, Jan. 9, 1852.

On Wednesday I went to a tea-party of Bethnal Green
silk-weavers, with their wives and children — about fifty
in all — at 6d. a head. Good tea, cake, and bread and
butter : we came rather late. I could not manage to get
into talk with the people themselves, only with visitors.
They seemed grave, sober people, the men for the most
p)art stunted and pale, but spirited and strong-minded, as
far as one could judge from their proceedings in the
public meeting which followed the tea; the women,
stouter and healthier than the husbands, listening with
no less attention to the excellent addresses made to them
by our people. Ludlow \ our greatest man, delivered
a lay sermon on brotherly love, honesty, endurance, self-
sacrifice, and the increased responsibilities of emancipated
workmen raised to a higher standard of enjoyment and
leisure by association ; and there was no flaw in the
beauty and truth of his language, whilst he spoke with
a slight mixture of gaiety and polite insinuation, which
made it very unlike a mere hortatory harangue. There
was nothing at all exciting in it — no false rhetoric — no
stumbling — no hesitation. Some of the people gazed, as
he spoke, as if they were hearing glad tidings. Their
manager, a very courteous and withal enthusiastic man,
who has but one room and one bed for himself, his wife,
and six children, spoke clumsily, but bravely and wisely.
There was not a word against the masters, from whom
the aforesaid twenty had escaped, and were teaching the
other men present to escape hereafter. No aristocrat
or money-maker could have taken offence at anything
said by any speaker. . .

1 J. M. Ludlow.

58 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April, 1852

This is altogether the most important of our insti-
tutions. No trade has been so long depressed. No
trade has so wearied the monied classes with cries for
alms. Now we are to teach them, and they are apt
learners, how to do without alms — how to free themselves
and their children. I have seen and read of nothing
more heroic or more religious than this meeting was.

Last night I attended as extraordinary member (speak-
ing, but not voting) the weekly meeting of our Council,
where I made acquaintance with Hughes ^, the new editor
of our Journal, a tall, high-spirited, hearty, plain-spoken
man, who wears a wide-awake, and smokes a cigar on
his way home after business is over, wishes some one
would leave him a fortune that he might give up law,
meanwhile applies his law, as do Ludlow, Furnivall,
and others, to the direction of our people, so as to
prevent their making legal mistakes. This is the man
I like best, as writer or talker, of our leaders — though
he is less philosophical and refined than Ludlow.

Lechlade, April 17, 1852.

The Doctor sang old glees generally, and was a good
man, to all appearances. With a young yeowoman called
Miss Brook he sang \Qry smoothly and softly a deHghtful
duet which I had never heard before, ' All 's Well,' a sort
of naval song, but in a tender pastoral, not a boisterous
forecastle strain ; fit for the gentle Collingwood, and car-
rying one back to the age of Braliam and Incledon, the
best days of Toryism ; not Pitt's days nor anti-Jacobin
days, but the glorious years when the Tories fought
for lil)erty ag:iinst Napoleon, and were the only possible

leaders of the nation.

' T. Hughes.

JAN. 1853] HUGHES AND LUDLOW 59

F/ioN, June 22, 185a.

I have become all of .1 sucldcn a I^"ifth-Form Master,
and rejoice in my promotion, which ^ets me up earlier
in the mornings and g-Jves me better books to read in
school, Livy and Theocritus particularly. I have a
sober, o;entlemanly division of fifty boys, with no great
amount of stupidity, and no idleness but what is easily
knocked on the head. They listen well, and answer
questions quite as I wish, and their goodness puts me to
shame daily. The only thing in which I am morally
superior to them is punctuality. But with all my faults
I get on pretty well with them, because they see and feel
that I take some interest in everything they do, and keep
a score of it.

To Mr. C. W. Johnson ^.

Eton, Jan. 21, 1853.

What right had they -', agreeing speculatively with
Coleridge in theology, to take advantage of the
objection made against his theology — what right to
profit by their being only less courageous than he ?

Goodford is honest, righteous, methodical, learned,
brave, laconic, prudent, unmeddlesome. He is also

^ Dr. Hawtrey had been appointed Provost of Eton about this time, and
it was expected that Mr. Coleridge would succeed him. W. J. wrote
to the Morning Post^ Jan. 17, 1853, a letter supporting Mr. Coleridge on
the ground * that he was as efficient a schoolmaster as any in England,'
that the fear of Puseyism was ' in 1853 simply an anachronism,' and that
neither as regards teaching ritual nor preaching could the Head Master
introduce ideas of his own without the approval of the Provost. The
letter ends thus, ' 1 write as a layman, a Liberal, and an Erastian.' This
letter was printed and sharply commented upon in a leading article in
the Windsor and Eton Express, Jan. 29, 1853. W. J.'s answer to the
article appeared m the same paper on Feb. 5.

- Fellows of Eton who appointed Dr. Goodford Head Master.

6o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [J^

sleepy, weak in health, uninfluential, obscure, unpolished.
No one admires him — every one respects him.

We shall probably be much happier under him than
under Coleridge.

I hope Coleridge will get the next vacant Deanery ;
Goodford the next Fellowship but one ; Rowland
Williams the next Head Mastership.

If they let me alone I shall resume work very

cheerfully.

Eton, Jan. 31, 1853.

An Erastian ! Why yoti are an Erastian. Have you
the least idea what it means } Why be frightened at
a name, if you cannot give its meaning ? An Erastian is
one who does not think that the Church ought to have
any separate power or jurisdiction underived from the
State. Every one who maintains the Royal Supremacy
is an Erastian. It is the opposite to a Free Church man.

Pupils! I have had nine since I wrote the letter, of
which I have been obliged to decline three, because
I have too many Fifth-Form. My letter is just as likely
to gain me friends as to lose them. Of course the
moment you venture to take a line in public affairs
you offend somebody. I have waited long enough — till
I was thirty — and I have a right now to enter the arena.
My letter is absolutely free from personality or innuendo.
It is a very consistent deduction from the principles of
true liberality. It has provoked a tolerably clever and
impudent article, and a puzzled letter, in the IVwdsor
Itxpress, to which journal, despised and hated by most
of my friends, but not by me, who use it as an organ
and respect it as a power, I have sent a carefully -written
and courteous answer, which I hope they will print by
the time you come.

1853] 'ERASTJAN.' CRIMEAN WAR 61

Eton, Sept. 28, 1853.

I think it hard now to .ivoid a war between Turkey
and Russia, as Russia, emboklened by the secession of
Austria, is evidently bent on a campaign next spring.
I think we ought to send 10,000, the French 20,000
troops to Varna, and put them into good winter quarters.
We shoukl encourage our youths and Frenchmen, with
as many Poles, Danes, Hungarians and Prussians and
Italians as have learnt war in 1848-9, to take com-
missions in the Turkish army, and do for the Turks
exactly what we did for the Portuguese — in which aise
Russia will break her teeth, like Massena, on a nut too
hard to crack.

I should not, if I were Foreign Minister, attempt any
more negotiation. A war with Russia, even if it cost
i^2o,ooo,ooo, would be a distinct good — it would check
bullying for some generations.

I think the British policy has been miserable. The
moment we heard of the passage of the Pruth we should
have sent Dundas to Sevastopol, leaving his light
steamers at the mouth of the Danube.

I only met one man in Turkey, &c., who did not speak
indignantly of our betrayal of Turkey. People belonging
to the British Embassy were as plain spoken as any.

I am reading the account of the Turkish Government
given in Brougham's Political Philosophy. It is vitiated
in a great measure by the changes that have occurred
since the book was published, i. e. in fifteen years. So
false is the assertion that Turkey is on the decline. No
South -Europe country, except Sardinia, has made more
progress in the last thirty years.

62 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

To Hon. Charles Wood [Viscount Halifax).

Aug. 2, 1854.

I dare say you will see my letter to your Father come
in with its black edge, and you will infer that I am in
mourning for my Father. It is not so. He is alive, and
not very much worse than he was when I left him on
July 21, though going straight to the grave. We hope
that he may be spared the terrible spasms which nearly
killed him on the 1 7th ; and that he will give way, after
slow decay, to mere weakness.

He comes every morning to the cheerful front room,
which was for forty years my Mother's morning room,
and has been kept ever since she died, in 1851, as
unchanged and inviolate as a tomb.

There he sits, looking at the corn ripening above
the beautiful distant woods, and writing, doing business,
talking, preparing for death, without any deviation from
his old ways.

Whilst we were attending to him on Monday my
Brother was suddenly summoned to the death-bed of
my Uncle, Mr. Furse, whose house ^ is seven miles up
the river. He was a solitary man, with no near relatives
that he was intimate with except our family ; and my
Brother was the nearest to him, and did a son's duty
to him for twelve hours of illness. . .

To Hon. Charles Wood.

Dec. 14, 1854.

I have been to London to see the wonderful ship ^, to
see the Queen, and to hear a debate, or a hum-drum, in

' Halsdon. ' The Gnat Eastern.

1854] CRIMEAN WAR 63

the House of T.ords, under the auspices of a staunch and
respectable Derhyite lliron, who had been primed in the
morning- with the catch-word ' too late.' The subjects
they preached on were so interesting that even the
Minister of War ^ could not prevent my eyes from filling-
with tears. It was very moving to see so unusual a con-
course of Peers listening so patiently, and so respectable
a body of strangers in the Gallery waiting for announce-
ments, and rejoicing- with good hearts over every
cheering statement.

The Duke seemed to be extremely well-intentioned
and kind — quite different from what he seemed to be in
the House of Commons as Lord Lincoln.

Lord Gre)^ followed him, with rather a better manner ;
but both of them, and Lord Derby too, wearied me and
my companions by their regTilar pump-handle House-
of-Commons cadences, and over-loaded, pointless sen-
tences. Lord Derby had the best voice. Lord Grey the
best flow of words and the most energetic and direct
march ; I could not stay to hear him out, or to hear
Lord Aberdeen, In whom, above all others then present,
I was and am interested.

I wish our English Parliament- men were a little more
like the famous Irish orators, or even more like Sir F.
Thesiger.

I was greatly pleased with the announcement about
the foreign troops to be raised — Germans, I hope.

One thing is obvious — Lord Derby knows no more
about it than M. or L. — not half so much as B.-J.^

Think of his saying that the battle of Inkerman was
foug"ht a fortnight after Alma !

' The Duke of Newcastle. "^ Eton boys at the time.

64 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

To Hon. Charles Wood,

May 6, 1855.

. . . They are going to have a Tent Match on Thursday
with the officers of the 2nd Life Guards, much too early
in the season ; but the reason is that some of the officers
have to go to the war at once, and want to have their
match first.

I met Molyneux again to-day. He tells me that poor
old Paulet ... is alive and well at Balaclava.

Brownrigg says his Father was nearly killed by two
Russian riflemen who fired while flags of truce were
flying. Otherwise he is safe, and wants nothing but
' Balbriggan hose.'

. . . My cousin Dowell was alive, well and angr^^
(with the French, for not allowing assault) on April 21.
The other cousin, Montagu, is starting for a two months'
journey into the heart of Russia with two brother
prisoners, French officers ; and he has got so interested
in some of the Russian officers, and has been treated so
very kindly, that he heartily wishes for peace. That
little ' boy-captain,' who died so happily and gloriously
on the 19th, Audley Lempriere, was my pupil from
1847 ^^ 1849; lived in Campion's room: a very little
creature (his good Colonel carried him off unassisted),
very innocent, clean, industrious, spirited and stupid.
I read of his death with sincere grief, but not without
pride ; and I have put down under his name in my
autograph -book, 'Killed at Sebastopol, with glory.'

I think we might build, when the war is over, as a
monument for the Eton people killed in the war, a pretty
chapel at Bovcney, instead of that wretched little barn
which now takes up so nice a situation. I would carve

[855] CRIMEAN WAR 65

the name of .1 man on each stone in the splays and
Hntels. It vvoukl be better than doinoj- what they are
to do at Ru<>"by, putting up a painted window.

To Hon. Charles Wood.

June 14, 1855.

I have had a curious invitation — to go to Brigrhton, for
Sunday, to meet my old travelling companion Seymour,
now a Crimean hero. I should like to go ; but of course
refused. Seymour wrote me word that all tlirough the
horrid winter he ' never for an hour was sick or sorry.'
Campion showed me just now a genial, simple letter from
his brother, written off Balaclava : he was not allowed
to land his regiment (72nd), being at once ordered
off to join the other Highlanders at Kertch. He says
they were all (in his ship) in high spirits and health, and
eager with excitement. All right ! - but yet I do not
relish this campaign like the last. Though anxious to hit
hard if we must hit at all, I have been unexpectedly
convinced by the speeches of Messrs. Gladstone, S. Her-
bert, Bright, Lord Stanley and Mr. Walpole that we
ought to have made peace the other day instead of
pressing the ' limitation ' as a sine qua no7t. I do not
remember any debate in which one party so completely
out-argued the other. Lord Palmerston's final speech
had all been anticipated, and was as flimsy as possible.
All through the debate I used to give the Fifth Form my
views of what was worth reading ; and it was in reporting
to others the speeches of the Peace-party that I was
myself convinced. Finally, I discoursed for an hour on
the subject and, I beUeve, convinced my hearers. . .

Lord Grey did perhaps more than any one to convince
me ; but there were parts of his speech which savoured

F

66 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

too much of the pleader maintaining- a paradox rather
than of the true statesman.

. . . Just compare these debates with the Fox or Can-
ning brilhancies, and you will see how far we are advanced
beyond those clever men of old times in gravity and
wisdom. Lord Palmerston smacks of the old unreformed
House of Commons, in which repartee and clap-trap told
more than reasoning, and every argument was addressed
to persons from an egotistical, or at least factious, point
of view. The only thing to be said for him is that
Disraeli is still more hollow and heartless, and Lord
Derby hardly better than either. He told Bright he had
no right to speak of the honour of Russia, as he threw
over the honour of England. Now this is a common
fallacy — the use of a word in two ways. Bright might
have said, perhaps, that we must not fight for honour —
meaning ' military glory ' or ' prestige.' But Bright never
said that we were not to fight in cases in which our
honour was assailed. For instance, if our right to
navigate the German Ocean were denied (practically),
Bright would assert that right, sword in hand. If we
were bound up in treaties and by promises to defend
Denmark or Portugal, Bright would fight for Denmark
or Portugal. Lord John Russell (whom 1 do not respect,
as you are aware) was, in my opinion, perfectly right to
do what the Times to-day abuses him for doing — saying
at Vienna that in making arrangements for the security
of Turkey the honour of Russia also should be con-
sidered. They may go on as long as they like ham-
mering at the plan of ' limitation ' — but, after all, the only
solid security against further intrusions of Russia in
Southern r2urope is to be found in Austria. Austria
should be charged \ioi the general good) with both

,855] CRIMEAN WAR 67

banks of the Danube all the way to the mouth. The
Frcncli oui^ht to liave an arsenal and advanced post as
near Constantinople as Malfci is. Then there will be
a fair scramble. The Four Great Powers will be all
alike able to c;-et to the great bone of contention, which
they should bind themselves by the act of a Congress,
equal in solemnity to the old Congress of Vienna,
to respect and abstain from as a forbidden luxur^^

I suppose when you challenged me to give you my
opinions about the present state of things, you meant
me to have an opportunity for owning that, after all, the
Aberdeen and Palmerston Cabinet have done very well.

I do not think so, though. The evidence of Lord
Aberdeen proves, what I thought before, that he erred
like Sir R. Walpole in consenting to be at the head of
affairs in a war in which he took no interest. An honest
man in a false position — such was Lord Aberdeen. His
successor I am tempted to describe as a dishonest man
in a position which suits him well, only perhaps less well
than the managership of some establishment like Astley's
Amphitheatre or Vauxhall Gardens.

Oh for a year of Castlereagh — the only man who aimed
at making England a military power, a nation sending
in one year nearly 100,000 soldiers to war. Whereas,
by their own confession, our late and present rulers aim
at nothing more than keeping up in the field a force
just double what Egypt or Sardinia can send, and after
two years of war and rumours of war have no spare
arrows in their quivers.

I know of no naval operations in any history more
satisfactory than these in the Sea of Azof. Naval opera-
tions have generally been regarded by the English in an
irrational manner, as good in themselves — whereas in

F 2

68 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

truth they are good only as subsidiary' to strategical
movements on land.

For instance, the battle of June i ", of which our grand-
fathers were proud, was gratuitous bloodshed. vSo would
the taking" or bombardment of Revel be now : it would
not tend to the conclusion of the war. A war can be
concluded, or a least a peace can be extorted, only by
the ^^ctorious occupation of territory.

The Baltic fleet should be regarded merely as making
a grand diversion in favour of the Black Sea forces.

To JR. War re Cornish.

Halsdon, Jan. 7, 1858.

Thank you for paying my bill and for writing to me.
1 am most sincerely sorry to miss you at King's. . .
I should have specially liked reading in the same room
with you, perhaps the same book, and I hope some
vacation to have that pleasure, when you have arrived
at a truly business-like perception of what is required
for University Scholarships and Classical Tripos. At
present you are thirty per cent, below the right concep-
tion of your prospects and duties as a Scholar.

I am afraid you do not know the value of the hours
directly after Lecture, or just before and just after tea
time. I have been talking more peremptorily about it
to Browning, who is still ' sub vexillo,' than I can venture
to write to you ; and I hop)e he will not forget to urge
upon you the exfx^'diency of giving up the piano in your
room as a fatal destroyer of reading.

If you worked five hours a day in term time, besides
Lectures, allowing one weekday as a holiday, and gave
up two months of the vacations to extra reading in

* Lord Howe's victory, 1790.

1858] ADVICE TO A FRESHMAN 69

Colleere or in some rural retreat in England or abroad
(only not at home), working seven hours a day all but
one weekday, there would remain plenty of time for
kinsfolk and acquaintances, for alternative pursuits, such
as music, French or drawing, and for (what I am very
glad to see you value) active bodily exercise. But I can
assure you that habitual dawdling at or near a piano,
and standing about irresolutely at ii a.m., and sitting at
wine later than 7 p.m., and spending all the immense
and absurd vacations at home — all this is incompatible
with high success, such as your many and hearty well-
wishers desire for you.

Going on at your present rate you may, no doubt, be
somewhere in the first class of the Classical Tripos, but
not an University Scholar, nor high enough in degree to
be sure of a valuable appointment at Eton or elsewhere.

Now these appointments will not be got so easily in
your time as they were in mine. There will be half
a dozen competitors for you : I had but one — hardly
even one.

I have been idle here — not because I am interrupted,
for I hardly see any one but my bachelor brother — but
I lost the impulse on coming away from Cambridge,
where I had a most satisfactory fortnight of mixed work
and pleasure — the first week not counted, which was
very little but pleasure and letter-writing.

I have in former years offered to help Kingsmen away
from the College in the Long Vacation ; but it never
came to anything.

It might, perhaps, be in the minds of some of you
to carr^" your lexicons into France or Switzerland or
the Rliine valleys. If such a party is ever got up
I should be glad to be invited to join it — though I do

70 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

not any longer pretend to be learned enough to act as
coach to people so advanced as our Scholars. . . How-
ever, as to reading parties, I think, after all, you young
people would read more at Cambridge, and the residence
abroad would be more useful and pleasant after taking
one's degree — and it is much cheaper to stay at King's
than to read anywhere else except at home. And this
brings me to the financial topic which I should be
opening upon if I were fortunate enough to be walking
with you just now, instead of writing in an empty house
with no sound but the twittering of a lonely woodpecker
and the popping of explosive firewood.

Pardon my intrusiveness when I exhort you to spend
an hour of your quiet vacation time in thinking over
your Christmas bills, and calculating how much is mere
initial outlay, how much is sure to come again, what
payments you are deferring, whether you are not using
for pocket money what is meant for necessaries, on the
ground that the bills for necessaries will stand over and,
indeed, rather like standing over than otherwise.

I am wretchedly extravagant ; but I have been all my
life frightened out of debt by seeing the degrading,
slavish misery it brings on my relations and acquaint-
ances. I see that it is an universal custom at King's
to go spending one's necessary ;^ioo a year on railways,
' coaches,' and other things that require oish, and letting
tailors, college cooks, &c., accumulate till one is B.A. or
M.A. The miserable consequence is that at twenty-two
a man is a slave for some time. He must take a private
tutorship to work off his debts — whereas he ought to go
abroad and live six months or a year en pension in
France, doing nothing but continuing his own educa-
tion. . .

1858] ADVICE TO A FRESHMAN 71

The thing" of all others that brinii^s one under water
is ' runnincj- down ' to such and such a place. This sort
of outlay is never reckoned in calculations of College
expenses ; it takes away £20 or ^^"30 a year (when you
include the incidental extra expenses for clothes, &c.)
out of the sum meant for washing, groceries, books, &c.
Another great and common cause of debt is buying
what one does not actually want — books, prints, &c.
I don't grudge a man a good deal for entertainments,
particularly small select wine parties. But I protest
against luncheons, meat at breakfast, suppers, long-
'combies' and the like. I spent ^30 a year on 'society'
at Cambridge, and never spent money better ; £^0 on
tuition, of which all but perhaps £^ was well invested ;
but I spent money on books which I regret ; none on
prints, however. The College library ought to be quite
sufficient for a King's man ; let alone such books as he
must buy to pencil-mark for future reference. Again,
pardon me for ending this violation of all conventional
scruples by saying something- highly improper : If you
want money to hire a coach, mathematical or otherwise,
I beg that you will not take it from other claims, but let
me advance it, and you may repay all such sums, ^100
if you like, when you are a prosperous man ten years
hence or so. Anyhow, don't grudge money on tuition.
I am sure you want a coach to strengthen your will for
reading steadily and writing composition ; and I really
set my heart on your doing something.

To the late W. H. Gladstone.

Eton, Feb. 12, i860.

You pulled me headlong- last night into what I had
always avoided with you, the discussion of a policy which

72 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

naturally attracts your sympathy. As I was hurried
I may have disturbed you by abrupt censure of what
you admire, nil the more because of the atmosphere of
similar feeling in which you move. I said that I thought
Lewis the best Chancellor of the Exchequer in my time.
I mean that I do not like the excessive prominence
given to financial measures in 1853 and i860. I think
it not good that the Budget should be the great product
of a Cabinet.

In the year 1842 it could not be otherwise ; but there
has been no year since then in which financial measures
have any title to enthusiastic exertion for or against
them. To abolish a chronic deficit, and to adopt from
Pitt's war-policy an engine of unlimited economical im-
provement, was a grand and critical effort, and has made
1842 the turning-point in our recent history. The
income-t:ix once established ought to have been soberly
contemplated as a permanent institution, capable of
sudden expansion in war, and giving in peace a fulcrum
for operations more or less speculative on other branches
of revenue. It was unwise to admit that it was a make-
shift or a necessary evil.

The existence of the tax in 1853 enabled Lord
Aberdeen's Cabinet to reduce the 'taxes on know-
ledge.' Its maintenance on the old sevenpenny rate
in the years since the Russian war (which was rendered
impossible by the anti- Lewis orator, followed as he was
by Mr. Disraeli at a safe distance), would have enabled
Lord Palmerston's Cabinet to knock off the remaining:
taxes of knowledge last year, and the wine duties this
year. . .

I believe that people will expect the minister to admit
that he was wrong in inveighing against the tax, to

tSco] MR, GLADSTONE'S POLICY 73

admit that it must, in all probability, be permanent at
a fixed rate (to rise in war), to settle once for all whether
there are any remediable hardships about it, to put off
all serious changes in the other taxes except such as
arise out of the treaty with France, and to apply his
original powers of thinking to the military and naval
expenditure.

We should also be assured that the Cabinet is in
earnest about the Reform Bill. As it is, people suspect,
not without reason, that this Pandora's box of disputiible
finance is opened to let fly a cloud of troubles that will
divert our attention from constitutional reform.

The vice of the Budget is this : that it looks like
^ log-rolling,' or coalition bargaining. In order to trump
Pakington, &c., the Palmerstons want to spend millions
more than they need on dockyards and nondescript
troops. The finance minister thinks this all wrong, but
is so out of sympathy with the nation about the general
attitude of self-defence that he has no great authority
when he condemns War Office and Admiralty extrava-
gance ; therefore he goes into competition with the
money-spending ministers, and is indulged with fancy
finance at the cost of disappointed taxpayers. At the
same time the non-Whig member of the Cabinet,
Mr. Gibson, drawing with him the support of Bright,
is to be allowed his million for paper duties. A man
of £200 a year w^ill be paying £2 or ^3 to gratify
these individualities.

Whereas what the men of £200 a year are willing to
pay for is the pride and the noble joy of holding a high
independent place amongst the nations ; and they would
worship the minister who would show them, as I have
not the least doubt it can be shown, that this can be

74 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

done without the eighth or even the seventh penny of
the income-tax.

The Cabinet is too large, and too much of a parlia-
ment, and it has an unprincipled, idle thinker at the
head of it. But if it passes the French Treaty, it will
be glorious in history. . .

You see you don't escape the critical schoolmaster,
even when a Lord of the Treasury.

To Rev. C. IV. Purse.

June, i860.

I enclose you a letter which will, I think, show you that
my pamphlet \ after all, is calculated to promote the
cause of reform at Eton. Ashamed as I am of its in-
congruities of style and awkwardnesses, I really think
it has proved, thus far, curiously successful. The people
here, whilst exulting in the defence against their assail-
ants, have received a perceptible impulse onwards.
I assure you, that it is not merely for the sake of
having influence here that I am glad I reserved so
much in my pamphlet. I feel that such a body as Eton
College ought to be dealt with very considerately, and
that one ought to give them full credit for anything in
the way of progress. It is very pleasant to see Balston
entering into the thing cordially and carrying the old
men with him, and also to hear of WiUiam Carter glorying
in his father's Uberal vote : ' It was the old man, after all,
that carried it,' he said.

To Rev. C. W. Fiirse.

June 20, 1 86 1.

I had been out last night at the Richmond dinner • ; so
I read your note as soon as I woke, when the maid

' F.toH Reform, Eton, i860.

'■' The annual dinner of the * Apostles.'

i862] 'ETON REFORM/ HENRY BRADSIIAW 75

delivered it; and it was the happy be^innin^ of a very
happy day, which I am now endin<;-. . .

The dinner was rather less brilliant than usual, partly
because F. Stephen was in the chair, partly beaiuse
Walpole and Cookesley gave the thing- a wrong- turn,
talking^ about Eton ; but it is a breath of mountain air
to me, nevertheless. . .

I had a good deal of talk to-day about the Commission
with Lord Lyttelton, who came to see his son play as
an old Etonian, and heartily enjoyed his innings of
forty-nine, got carefully and slowly. It was a very jolly
thing to hear the lads applauding the captain of last
year ; and many of them know that his father is watch-
ing him.

I strongly recommended George Brodrick for Secre-
tary to the Commission. Lyttelton is the only Eton
man on. Twisleton is for Winchester, Lord Devon for
Westminster, Lord Clarendon for the men that hate
public schools.

To Henry Bradshaw.

Eton College, Feb. 9, 1862.

Are you not coming- here ,'' You will have a new
motive if they let you see Hawtrey's books, which will,
I suppose, be sold.

But come, anyhow, to see the boys and young men.
My friend Dalmeny is looking forward to making your
acquaintance, with the natural eagerness of a buddingr
bibliomaniac. I took him last week to Lilly s, and he
forthwith inquired for rare tracts printed by his ancestor
Primrose. We went on to Evans's, and there he picked out
a print representing another Primrose of the seventeenth
century, preacher to the French Church in London. At

76 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

Holloway's he bought autographs, and finally went and
made acquaintance with my brother and sister, and
showed as much interest in a live child as in dead
books. He has the finest combination of qualities I have
ever seen. He was quite taken, as I was too, with Duf-
ferin's show speech (do you remember Dufferin, how
Cookesley called him the ' orator ' ?) ; and when Wayte
set theme out of it the boy put the peroration about
* Laboramus ' into flowing-, simple, dignified Latin, and
then went with me through the last book of the Princess.
The night before I had translated to him most of the
beautiful bits o{ A gainer Jtnon^2ind. I assure you he en-
joyed the old poetry nearly as much as the modern.
I am doing all I can to make him a scholar ; anyhow,
he will be an orator and, if not a poet, such a man as
poets delight in.

To Lord Rosebery.

King's College, April 20^ i86a.

I have been qualifying for an interview with you by
reading the Family Life of Pitt \ which I find savours
not nearly so much of the family as of the Annual
Register^ being stuffed with narratives of events which
Pitt expressed no opinion upon— such as the Battle of
Camperdown and the visions of Brothers. I find the
third volume much better than the two first. There is
really much valuable light thrown on Pitt's resignation.
It is a successful book in raising one's already high
estimate of Pitt's character ; but it is not at all an in-
structive book for a politician ; e. g. the Budgets are
treated in a startlingly superficial way. The author
should at least have given us the benefit of a striking

' Life of Pitt, by Lord Stnnhopc.

i862] PITT. LORD SJIELBURNE. BOCONNOC. 77

histor}^ of Pitt s financial policy given in a IJudget speech
by Gladstone in itS53. . .

The biooraphy ought to explain, I think, why and
how Pitt was estranged from Shelburne, who was at
startincr his leiider. I believe Shelburne must have been
a really bad man ; but the silence about him after the
break-up of his Ministry puzzles me in all books, since
he remained for twenty years a leading speaker. . .

On the whole the book is [more] like a shambling
and scanty history of England, with an occasional insertion
of something about Pitt, than a political biography.

To a Ptipil.

August 18, 1862.

I wish you to be one that will not merely pick out
and appropriate what pleases, but unconsciously attract
and indirectly stir and elevate the minds of equals no
less than inferiors. If you face all reasonable difficulties
in the way of headwork, you will become less fastidious
and therefore more influential in dealing with those in
whom the head and the heart go together, that is the
great bulk of active people.

To Lord Rosebery.

Penzance, August 29, 1862.

This gallery [at Boconnoc] is very long, and seems to
be famous. One end of it is a small, pleasant book-room,
containing one or two Morocco relics of the first and
last Lord Grenville ; amongst others a copy given by
him to his nephew Lord Fortescue (my courteous host),
of the Httle book which he edited, Chatham's Letters to
his Nephew, with the letter of dedication to William
Pitt, beginning so coldly ' My dear Sir,' after they had

78 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

been so closely and dearly united in their sweet youth.
Pitt never answered the letter, which must have been
meant, in Addington's days, as an olive branch.

I was taken to see an old beech called Gray's ; not the
least proof that he was ever there ; but it is a sweet spot,
worthy of him. . .

Elsewhere, on a heath, a tall granite obelisk, sacred to
the memory of Sir Richard Lyttelton, close to the battle-
field^ where the great warrior of the west. Sir Bevill
Grenville . . . helped to rout the Roundheads. . .

This, and another bit of broken ground, form a
charminor contrast to the lono- troug-hs of woodland
where the deer and the streamlets wander. It is the
most shady, soft, silent, dreamy, poetical spot I ever
saw ; and I like to connect my beloved eighteenth cen-
tury— the first age since the time of Pliny when men
were at leisure to worship virtue — with so much truly
natural beauty and repose.

The house has a singularly delicate air of faded old-
world refinement about it. I suppose it has never been
smartened up for a new married couple for sixty years.
I wish they could keep it unchanged.

To F. War re Cornish.

K. C. C, Nov. 17, i86a'.

. . . Did you ever read in Keble's Lyra In7ioce7iiiiim
the poem on ' Shyness ' } It should be in every teacher's
note-book. . .

I have sent these lads some modern history questions ;
and Dalmcny promises to do them, that he may thereby

* Bradock Down, Jan. 1643.

' This letter was written when Mr. Johnson was absent from Eton in
consequence of illness ; his work being done by his colleagues at Eton.

1862] BOCONNOC. CHARLES KINGSLEY. MUSIC 79

induce me to come back — rather a circuitous reason,
I would jrive you a piece of plate if you would ^et that
lad to work : he is one of those who like the palm
without the dust. He writes me word that he got ' fair '
for his Lyrics. . .

Man after man comes here delighted with Kingsley.
He has been going over the best possible subject — the
early history of the United States : when G. reported
to me he had got as far as the settlement of Georgia.
Knowing the subject, I feel satisfied that he is telling
them the truth ; and he is verifying my prediction that
he would get more good from Cambridge than he would
do it harm.

John Mozley came here to-day, asking to be told about
political economy and its relations to charity, &c., &c. :
a thoughtful man, wishing for new kinds of knowledge.
He also admires Kingsley 's lectures. Indeed, the testi-
mony to their merits is oven\^helming.

Liveing has his laboratory full of students : but Geology
and Comparative Anatomy, the two cognate sciences
which open the mind, are in abeyance. . .

One of the scholars told me that in scholarship one
can get no decided opinion from any one here but
Shilleto. There was no one like Goodford, sure of the
truth in a question of accuracy. . .

Catch me reading Colenso. My divinity has been
Edward Irving, Mores Catholici, Paradise Lost, Me-
moires de Frangois de la Noue (the stern Huguenot).

If there is one kind of literature that I hate more
than another it is ingenious interpretation of the Bible ;
worse than Gladstone on Homer. . .

Did you ever read what follows ? * Music is the most
entirely human of the fine arts, and has the fewest

8o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

analoga in nature. Its first delightfulness is simple
accordance with the ear ; but it is an associated thingf,
and recalls the deep emotion of the past with an intel-
lectual sense of proportion. Ever>^ human feeling- is
greater and larger than the exciting- cause — a proof,
I think, that man is designed for a higher state of
existence ; and this is deeply implied in music, in which
there is always something more and beyond the im-
mediate expression.'

I wish one could get as solid a grain as this out of
two books of Platonic chaff. Two books of Polity have
I by shameless skipping (' the band as before ') got
through in the last two or three days ; and I have got
a little Greek, and some pretty dramatic playfulness ;
but oh, how little science or poetry.

I used to get sick of the everlasting- aWa ; but now
I fancy whenever I see it that it is a bit of notation
representing some bird-like movement of the beautiful
Greek throat or eye, and it becomes very acceptable
except at the end of a draggletail sentence.

To Lord Roscbery.

Torquay, Dec. 9, i86a.

I wish you to read, though it is not much of a book,
Bourne's Life of Sir Philip Sidney. Bourne has learnt
to admire virtue and liberty from writers better than
himself, and he writes in much the same strain as Motley.
The really delightful part of Sir Philip Sidney's Hfe is
his passionate yet intellectual defence of his injured
father, rewarded by the father's perfect admiration. Of
all human ha[)i)iness the crown is to be able to defend
one's father, or to thank a son for his championship.

i86a] SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. TIIORVALDSEN 8i
To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Torquay, Dec. i8, 1862.
1 send you a metrical experiment, having had the line
running in my head —

KarQavolaa h\ k(?<t'' ov5(itot€ fxvafxoavva aiOtv ^

— and not having the r]XaKaTa'^ at hand, nor having read
it lately. Do you know any other specimen of the metre ?
It seems to me peculiarly Greek, not fairly represented
by ' O crudelis adhuc' I enjoy the entire absence of
spondees — quite a new sensation. Please to correct my
accents, as I have no books. . .

My lines are suggested by the death of Thorvaldsen :
he died at the age of seventy, imperceptibly, having fallen
asleep at a concert. But when I had done them I re-
membered Provost Hawtrey's last appearance in public,
at a music party, where he fell asleep : and so I value
my lines as a bit of honour done to him, and it
seems odd that I should unintentionally have caught in
the second and third lines his characteristic sympathy
with the young. I append a mild paraphrase for the

ladies

NEC CITHARA CARENTEM.

aoov -qZv ri fxoi, Movaa <pi\r}, yiixpiir(p av Oavo)'

fiT) fi€ KQjcphv la jx-qhi fiapiiv TOiffi vewTepois

^Tjv TO Xoiiroi^, ad S' et ri ao(pbv Kal Kakuv eKfiaOeiv.

fTJpai ov al ■npetTf.i, Mvr)fio(Tvvr)S ttoi Xiyvpa, (TTvyeiv,

ijTii oiaOa Xpuvov toTs dyaOois d)s 6eus evfiaprjs,

Kat nXaTWi't avvd Kal 'XocpoKKfi, kovk dpiOfxds errj.

5(vp' 'E\ev6epia avvvo/j.€ Kal fifJTfp djjSovwv'

Sird fJ.01 fiiKos ov Xafx-npov edv vvv S* dvfpeTv Sokcj

ovK dv€v ae9(Vj (W virvos oS' €(Tt', (itc tu TeOvdvai.

Guide me with song, kind Muse, to death's dark shade ;
Keep me in sweet accord with boy and maid,
Still in fresh blooms of art and truth arrayed.

1 Sappho, fr, 73 (Bergk.). ^ Theocritus, Id xxviii.

G

82 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

Bear with old age, blithe child of Memory !

Time loves the good ; and youth and thou art nigh

To Sophocles and Plato, till they die.

Playmate of freedom, queen of nightingales,
Draw near : thy voice grows faint : my spirit fails
Still with thee, whether sleep or death assails.

To Rev. C. W. Furse.

Torquay, Jan. 8, 1863.

I am reading a book which . . . contains enough to
make an Englishman generally happy — Dalhousies
Administratiori^ . The second half of the first volume
gives the details of the incomparably clever and bene-
ficent government of the Punjaub, with its magic reforms.

Dalhousie was as quick as Henry VIII, otherwise this,
as an eminent man once said to me (in confidence), is
a slow age. We are made slow by having to consult so
many men. . .

Jan. 9, 1863.

I could not get to sleep last night, being engaged in
making a half- humorous, half-sentimental boating song
for the 4th of June ; and when I wake I find it burning to
be written out. I do a song with a tune in my head, or
perhaps two ; last night it was 'Waiting for the waggon '
and 'A health to the outward-bound.'

There is a brass band here, which is more of a comfort
than morning visitors.

To F. War re Cornish,

Jan. 14, 1863.

' I hate to see trees pollarded — and nations,' said one
of the Hares in the Guesses at Truth, perhaps thinking
of It.ily or wSpain after the action of the Holy Alliance.

' Hy Edwin Arnold.

1863] DALHOUSIE. AMERICAN WAR 83

I hate to see a nation, formed by wisdom and cemented
by common sacrifices and mutual forbearance for whole
jrenerations, broken u]) for what should be considered
a Parliamentary defeat.

l^ut I shall be quite satisfied if the war results in the
defniitivc formation of a slave Power, limited by the
Mississippi, hemmed in by the old Free Soil, by the new
Free Soil of Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas (won by
fig-hting), and still further by France ruling- Mexico, and
Spain strong in Cuba.

Let this be the amount of the new Confederation, and
I shall feel pretty sure that the accursed institution of
slavery will come to an end, by economical causes, in
a few generations. The old United States, spreading
freely on the right bank of the Mississippi, will break
up in due time, perhaps, with tw^o or three Confedera-
tions ; but it will be free from the shame it has borne
ever since Victoria came to the throne, the disgrace of
abetting and protecting slave -owners.

I do not wish the war to end soon. I believe it is the
only way of raising a body of ruling, honourable families
in either North or South. I believe the Lees and
Maclellans will hand down to their sons some such
nobility as Washington and Hamilton (who died without
sons, I think) might have been expected to bequeath ;
and I cannot think there will be another Jefferson to
poison the fruits of virtuous exertion.

We must not expect the Americans to behave now
as well as Europeans behave. It is the first chance the
good wholesome people of the North, the high-spirited
people of the South, have had of delivering their politics
from the corrupt influence of trading politicians.

The Southerners, as regards military life, are worthy

G 2

84 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

antagonists ; but the Northerners carry to the field the
cathoHc principles of justice and liberty. The Union,
and the rights of man, are glorious battle-cries. On the
other side the object fought for is the right to cover
the greatest possible area with slavery.

I think I shall get through the nine weeks. I am to
be in London (Athenaeum Club) on the i6th.

To Hon. Charles Wood.

Eton, Feb. i, 1863.

It is revolting to my notions to think of people
folding themselves up in religion without dream-
ing of the cardinal virtue of justice, political justice.
I had rather be one of Mr. Hubbard's clergymen at
St. Alban's, Holborn, preaching (for want of a church) to
fifty people in a frowsty cellar, than one of your soft
Dominicans immured out of sight, and out of sympathy
with freemen. Disgusting is that ' other-worldliness '
which divorces piety from patriotism.

Did you ever read the Form of Prayer to be used at
Sea .^ It is highly national ; and in the first Collect there
is a bit of mysterious sublimity, ' Who hast set bounds
to the sea, till day and night shall be no more ' (not
quoted correctly).

The Anglo-Catholic John Henry Newman would
have been much more dangerous to you than any of
Antonclli's reptiles. He was the greatest man that ever
tried, and he made the most noble effort ever made, to
change the character of a nation ; it was a splendid and
beneficent failure. . .

I read with great interest an extract from the great
preacher Lacordairc's letters : it was about Oxford : per-
haps I have already mentioned it to you. When you

1863] ST. ALDAN'S, HOLDORN. ROME. FLORENCE 85

come here I will show you some lines I wrote at Torquay
on that text, to prove to you that thouc^h I loathe
Roman Popery, particularly when enthroned in the
beloved V^irgils city, I can have a little fellow-feeling
with a French Catholic. Indeed, the longer I live the
more I appreciate the French altogether, including their
piety, which is not with them destructive to love of
country.

I am glad you are going soon to Florence. I was
there four days, not worshipping it, but glorying in it. . .
I went about the streets cheering wdth the Tuscans for
their King, the day they received him ; and Butler ^ and
I . . . said to each other that the king of the two tribes
w^as coming to accept the homage of the ten tribes,
coming from Hebron to Mahanaim, to make a contract
with his people.

' He chose not the tribe of Ephraim ' — that is, the
showy Naples — but Florence, the true jewel of modern
history ; and so on with one of those historical parallels
which go upon three legs. But Florence really is
thoroughly delightful to think about ; it retains the
lines, the features, that it had in its heroic age. Butler
and I stood for hours, waiting for the King, opposite
the Duomo, leaning against the very Baptistery of
St. John which Dante loved so well, and facing that
tow^er of his friend Giotto's. Whereas at Rome you
must scrape in an ash-pit for a bone of the real Romans ;
indeed, a visitor like you is so absorbed in art and
society and ecclesiavStical chaff that he never thinks of
the Valerii and Sempronii, never sees anything (I
believe) that was seen by Tacitus, except the horrible
amphitheatre, the shameless monument of the w^orst part

^ Rev. H. M. Butler, Master of Trinity.

86 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

of the Roman character. At Athens you can shut your
eyes to anything- modern and intrusive, and the ruins
are in perfect harmony with those everlasting works of
nature which Sophocles loved.

I am sorely afraid that in this Albertine age our upper
class are corrupted by 'art,' This Epicurean indifference
to the critical struggle against that worst of antichrists,
the modern glorification of slavery, would thoroughly
shock, not only Burke and Cowper, but Earl Grey or
Lord Macaulay.

Pray keep up the memory of the Whigs who abolished
slavery ; read the memoirs of the men who had the sense
which your contemporaries have not, the deep-seated
indignation against all kinds of tyranny. You are born
into an age which, as far as England is concerned, has
no serious grievances to be redressed. The battle of
justice has been won ; you live amongst refined people,
who, as far as politics go, 'abhor no manner of evil.'
I had rather, at this moment, be a Russian than one of
your Belgravian diletia7iii.

I feel the more strongly because I have been myself
benumbed a little by reading for so many years hardly
anything that served as an antidote to the Times and
the Saturday Review. I now read the Spectator^ which
is edited by Hutton, who used to edit the Economist^
and I find myself once more heart and hand with true
lovers of freedom.

I hope wStansfield and Forster will speak up this week
for the ' (^ood old cause.' You have at least one true
Whig in the Cabinet, the Duke of Argyll, who has
spoken wisely aful bravely about those detestable
preachers who say that slavery is a divine institution.
I am afraid he will never be Prime Minister. But I

1863] IVIIIG POLITICS. DOLLINGER 87

prophesy that the ' vSutherland connexion ' will be known
hereafter as the best nucleus of true expansiv^e, generous
W'hi^-j^ery, the only ' set ' to which advanced Liberals
can trust themselves.

I read Dollinger's Church History ages ago, and
found him a hard-headed writer. If you want to do
justice to Roman Catholics, read Mohler's Syinbolik^
a great German book, translated long ago, dogmatic
theology with a sweet savour of piety, not at all
repulsive.

Journal. Aug. 1863. I am halfway through a long
vacation, which may be my last. I began it by driving
over to Staines, after a day of sorrow without bitterness,
a day of sad and kindly partings. At Staines I wrote
my report serenely in a tolerably comfortable parsonage.
It was a pleasing novelty to take the Thames in a boat
from that end, and work upwards to Ankerwyke. . .

Aug. 5. On to Alton, Hants. In the train fell in
with the great defender of heresy, Fitzjames Stephen,
who discoursed theology and Renan. I felt so frightened
that I expressed myself very incorrectly on legal and
critical matters, but recovered myself on purely military
and American ground. Just as I was getting to feel that
I was getting to row him round with my historical oar we
stopt at Alton, and I was greeted by the kind and bright
face of Montagu Knight, who drove me to Chawton. . .

Item, on Sunday we caught a mole, and tried him in
a ^boxful of sand, and were amused with his rapid con-
struction of tunnels, and found him very good company,
I may say good innocent chasse for Sunday ; finally
let him loose in rough turf, and he got away as quick as

88 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

a ghost. This was the only occasion on which we fairly
rallied the whole family : one of the young ladies read an
instructive passage out of a natural history book, whilst
the others plunged their hands into the sand feeling for
the mole, and brought him an elegant cold collation,
worms and water. . .

Aug. 19. At noon it stopt raining, and I landed
at Furness Abbey. The hotel, mixed up with the
station, is handsome and not overdone ; the servants
homely and civil, the table d'hote at 1.30, simple and
sound and cheap. I sat next to a superior clergy^man,
who said grace when asked, and knew the Knights of
Chawton. The grounds are \&ry delectable, and contain
magnificent ruins : the best in colour and bulk and
variety that I ever saw. I was not the least teased by
any vendor of prints. I wandered about for hours enjoying
the splendid combination of washed sky, bright sun,
bright grass, red sandstone, and good trees, with a pretty
little murmuring stream by the side of the modest rail-
road, which, when it comes up to the east end of the
Abbey Church, hides itself in a tunnel. It is altogether
the most comfortable, satisfactory and unspoilt ruin that
I ever saw.

At 5.0 I went on, passing with delight heather and
broom, till I reached my destination, Seascale, where the
line goes over a noble expanse of sands. I saw but two
houses besides the station. I asked at one for a bed,
accosting, at almost the same moment with two other
travellers, a calm and full-blown landlady, who wore one
of those huge brooches of which I had often wondered
what became of them. She replied that her house had
been full of regular lodgers for weeks, and that there
were no beds or food to be had at Seascale, not even a

1^3] CUAIVTON. FURNESS, WASTWATER 89

c«irriag-c to take one on. Nor was there a train, except
a lui>^<i;^a^e train. She advised me to go on, seven miles,
to the little village of Strands, close to Wastwater. But
how was I to go? There was a horse and a boy, en-
gaged to take a gentleman to Dri gg— would be back in
an hour.

Meanwhile my competitors had extorted two beds
and a promise of food.

I took a walk on the sands, looking hard for the
ebbing sea across the doubtful pools, whilst a strong
north wind raged upon me and the sun glared his last.
Then once more did I feel the rare terror of the sea-
coast, the terror of childhood remembered as far back as
anything, enhanced by my very early acquaintance with
Edgar Ravens wood and the Kelpie's Flow. I saw^ the
sun to bed, without ever reaching the actual waves ;
heard my last hope, the luggage train, rattle by ; sat
down on the sand-grass to warm my chilled fingers ; then
came back to the prosaic arrangements of a tourist ; a
glass of brandy, the packing of my bag, the directing of
my hea\y luggage, the bargaining for a journey to
Strands. I parted on very friendly terms with my tran-
quil and well-bred lady of Seascale, promising to write
for a bed next year, and consigned myself to the boy,
who very soon announced to me that he had discovered
that the gentleman whom he drove to Drigg was ' tipsy,'
and then gave me local knowledge, and his far-reaching
experiences, till through darkness and unaccountable
gates we came over one or two hills to the village of
Strands and its two ' hotels ' — and my anxiety about
a bed was soon relieved, and three well-boiled eggs
were the supplement to my Furness dinner ; and I was
Sultan or Bashaw in the best, perhaps the only, bedroom

90 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

of a humble, respectable, manless cottage, the bill next
morning for two meals and bed being four shillings.

Thtcrsday, A tig. 20. I ate three more eggs, and
was off at 8.0, on the top of a Manx horse, six years
old, called Silas. . .

We soon got out of Strands and within sight of the
Screes, awful precipices bounding Wastwater on the
opposite (east) side : on them there are wild goats, the
descendants of goats which were introduced to drive
the sheep off, and prevent their breaking their necks.
This antipathy of goats to sheep I had been told of
before in Cumberland, but I find it is unknown to people
in general. There were on the roadside elaborate ar-
rangements for haystacks, but no hay : there was some
bigg or bearded wheat, growing and promising to ripen
in November. There are foxes in the hills, and every
farmer keeps, besides several collies, one hound ; so that
when they combine they get up a pack to kill a fox.
I saw one of these hounds crestfallen and modest,
following some shepherds, and a colley -driven flock of
black-faced sheep, which all leapt a bit of water which
they could have walked through without wetting much
of their trotters. . .

Advancing to Great Gable, which is a stately hill,
I found it good to hold on to the mane of Silas, having
my bag hanging to my neck by double straps. Silas
discreetly divided the upward part of the Styhead Pass
into stages, and took a bite of grass whilst waiting for
his master, who was making up my Bond Street
umbrella into a double bulge of gam pish ncss. But
when we topped the pass I resigned Silas, and walked,
making the lad ride, of which he seemed ashamed. So
I tri[)[)ed cheerfully down by the tarn where Cornish

1863] KESWICK. LOWTHER CASTLE gt

bathed in '59, and I scrambled gladly over the many
roiioh and merry streams that flow towards Derwent-
water, and enjoyed the sudden and brilliant contrast
between the austerity of the southern Wastwater-side
and tlie gay and varied slope towards rich liorrowdale.
The mountains here are all the more striking because
you come upon them without much break from the flat
sea- coast. As we got into the riant Seathwaite regions
we began to meet tourists, and they became more and
more numerous as we neared Lowdore, which I reached
in time for luncheon, and having fed I slept deeply: then
saw the waterfall, which was more considerable than in
'59, and hurried in an uncontrollable trap to Keswick. . .

Friday, Aug, 21. I left Keswick on the top of
a coach at 9.0, and in three hours and a half reached
Penrith. I was on the hindmost seat, with four people
opposite me. As I never go in second-class railway
carriages, and seldom in omnibuses, I felt something out
of the way in having to confront ordinary middle -class
travellers so long, with nothing to do but talk to them
or listen to them. . .

One ought to be able to make more of one's fellow-
creatures ; but in truth they seemed to me insipid ; they
did not talk as people so often do on a French diligence,
that is to say, with easy gaiety and a considerable amount
of communicativeness. I wish I could like the common
Britons as well as I like the Frenchmen. I had several
hours to spare at Penrith ; therefore, in obedience to the
guide-book and the landlord, I took a gig and was driven
past Brougham Hall, which the driver wanted me to
visit, to Lowther Castle. . .

Coming back to Penrith I went to see in the church-
yard the dismal strange old granite obelisks which are

92 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

believed to be gravestones of an old British king, and
were always visited (says the guide-book) by Walter
Scott. . .

Saturday, Aug. 22. After breakfast I went to
Dumfries : left luggage at the station and took advice
about the lions, which ended in my going to Car-
laverock Castle, about eight miles. As soon as I got
out of the town I found myself going south, parallel to
the Nith, with the fine mountain Criffel far away on
the starboard bow. On the west the clouds melted
into the rim of the gently curving broad valley, and
I lost myself in a silvery haze. It made me tingle
and shiver like music. At last I had got a sensation,
and it was certain I had not travelled in vain this time.
If one could discharge all petty and paltry impressions
and string together those rare and sweet sensations, the
retrospect of life would be a trail of glory. After some
miles of riant country we got to humble villages, and
waste lands, with a look of the sea about them ; and in
a lonely region, on good turf, backed by a small wood,
and girt with a broad moat choked with all kinds of
water plants, was the famous stronghold of the Max-
wells.

On returning to Dumfries I was dropt at the old
church. . . Presently I came to the real place, outside the
church, a small shrine of Greek style, glazed, containing
some plain prosaic gravestones lying flat, with a rilievo
on the wall, in which Hums in a swallow-tailed coat, with
an over- large head and open throat, looks round from
his plough at the allegorical creature who appears in
the sky and threatens him with some sort of wrapper ;
something, one may hope, more suitable to a plough-
man than a dress coat.

1863] DUMFRIES. CAPENOCH 93

After this I was asked whether I should like to see
the tombs of the Martyrs. If I had not been reading
my guide-book, I should have lost the respect of the
key-bearing woman by owning that I did not know
who the Martyrs were ; but I jumped at it like a dace
at the hook, and at once assumed the aspect and attitude
of Old Mortality;

It is curious and also comfortable to find the Dum-
friesshire people interested at once in Prince Charles
and in the Covenanters. I boldly tell them that I am
deeply Hanoverian, though tolerant of Jacobite songs,
and I care as much for the Covenanters as for any
enthusiasts I ever read about, unless the De la Noue^
people were enthusiasts.

It is also curious to see how much they think of Burns,
and how proud they are of him, and how their memories
are stored with his rhymes, whilst they deplore his moral
degradation and speak sorrowfully of the mischief which
he did to the young men by teaching them infidelity.

Capenoch, Monday, Aug. 24. . . General Sir Alex-
ander Clark Kennedy, K.C.B., Colonel of the Scots Greys,
who took an eagle at Waterloo. . . The arrival of the old
soldier set me upon reading Siborne's Waterloo^ and the
references of my host to Spence made me, in fairness,
read Spence. . . I asked the old gentleman why we had
no cavalry at Quatre Bras ; he said that his Brigade,
Ponsonby's, was marching up and down the country all
day, not knowing where they were wanted; marched
sixty miles and came up when it was all over. Does
not this go some way to show that Wellington had been
out-generalled ? I asked w^hy the French did not ride
in upon us at Fuentes d'Onoro ; he said they had no

^ Franfois de la Noue (' Bras de fer') the Huguenot leader 1531-1591.

94 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

opportunity after the first hour, when they ought to
have done it. In the advance towards Vittoria our
cavalry had an opportunity of taking a whole column of
infantry, the garrison of Salamanca, left in a plain
unsupported : but the Duke rode up and told the horse
artillery to cease firing, and let the French go. At the
time he, Kennedy, was bitterly disappointed ; but after-
wards he made out to his own satisfaction that the Duke
was afraid of scaring the French away too soon : he wanted
to shut them up in the mountains by Graham's flank
march. . . When he took the eagle, it was in attacking
broken infantry. He told us how he ' unscientifically' told
his men to ' attack the colour,' got up to the officer who
bore it, ran him through the body, and, as he was seizing
the eagle, had a very little bit of his nose taken off by
the discharge of a musket, which made his eyes water ;
he had turned his head suddenly and without knowing
why, not seeing the musket which was close to him. . .
He had been to Waterloo since as a visitor, and found
the guide correct in his account of the eagle, on which
he told the guide who he was. . . It was something for
fne to meet with a man that could speak of Waterloo.

He remembered Burns dining at his father's house
three or four days before his death, coming by his own
wish to meet Mrs. Riddell, with whom he had quarrelled
and wished to be reconciled before his death, which he
knew was near.

Mrs. Gladstone gave me some little account of the
Carlyles. She evidently docs not appreciate ///>// but
praises /ler. He is a very industrious man, and is quite
happy at having so arranged his day as to gain half an
hour lately. Mrs. Carlyle was greatly taken at Capcnoch
with a little penny matchbox hung on a nail in her bed-

1863] WATERLOO. CARLYLES, SCOTT 95

room ; 'just what Tom would like of all things, to light
his pipe with.'. .

Thio'sday, Aug. 2j. I forq;ot that on vSunday I read
a wonderfully good, original, scriptural, clever sermon
of Spurgeon's on Ruth's dipping her bread in the
vinegar. Nothing in the sixteenth or seventeenth
century would have been more English and at the same
time Hebrew. It requires genius, or something like it,
to preach with so complete a deliverance from the style
of this age. The imagery was half witty, if wit is truly
defined as ' the discovery of unexpected relations between
things,' and half poetical. George Herbert, Donne,
Cowley would like it.

Friday, Aug. 28. It cleared up by the time I
reached Melrose, where I was dropt about sunset.
I walked up stream, wondering to think how I had
forgotten the place since I went there in my Christmas
holidays of 1846 from Hartrigg. How dull and tame,
how beclouded with misconceptions I was then, how
enslaved by my Whig mentor ! The love of literature
had then been overlaid by a half-hearted love of science,
and though I went to see Scott's trees and books, I did
not care for Scott in '46 as I did in '^f^^ when he
died, and I subscribed five shillings to the fund for
saving his library from creditors. And now, my ambi-
tion being trodden under foot, my hopes of improving
the world withered away, social liberty attained, tongue
loosed, shyness diminished, theories given up, I find
I love Walter Scott as well as I did in boyhood, and
take Tweedside for the home of my fancy. . .

Dryburgh, Saturday, Aug. 29. — I fell in with
a dear little boy aged eleven, with a delicate voice,
who told me the names I asked for. ' This goes to

96 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

Galashiels ' (I had been there in '46). ' Do you know
Gala Water ? ' ' No,' said he. I asked for the sake of
the sweet song; and next day I had the pleasure of
seeing- that classic water in full force from the train.
' Do you know the Eildon Hills ? ' ' Yes,' said he,
smiling with a budding smile and looking up at them.
I looked up too, recognized them with strange interest ;
I fancied there was on them the same veil I had noticed
in '46, when they seemed uncanny, and redeemed
Tweedside from looking no more poetical than Devon-
shire. . .

I turned to the left, and got to the ruins of a suspen-
sion bridge, where Tweed was flowing valiantly. After a
little looking about I saw a bluff of red rock to the right,
and, just before the river was turned by it, a series of
' stickles ' ; and going that way I soon was ware of a boat
coming from a cottage opposite. I was sculled across
for a penny below the rapids, and told I could not miss
my way to Dry burgh Abbey. . .

Bending gently to the right I came upon friend
Tweed again, for he had been round the bluff meantime,
and was doubling on himself like the good old Torridge.
... I rambled about with the pleasure of a discoverer,
heightened by a grain or two of trespass ; nor did any
one take umbrage except a bird or two, scared out of
the ivy : other birds, one or two, perhaps only one,
sang to me encouragingly ; and my scientific friends
whom I have since consulted, tell me it must have been
a robin. I thought all birds had relaxed uvula in
August, so that I made much of this robin, if it was
a robin. . .

I don't know to this day who lives in those houses
close to tlie ruins, who owns them. I only know I was

'

1863] DRYDURGII. SCOTT AND IVORDSIVORTII 97

alone there with the memory of Walter the Rhymer.
How much more keenly than I could would he have
enjoyed that clear shininir after rain, those \\^\\t shadows
thrown by the clouds which swung- overhead, released
from the labour of yesterday, free to drift where they
liked now they had filled Tweed to his banks, and
washed the cobwebs off Dryburgh. How kind he would
have been to me. What life a few words of his, spoken
in Scotch, would have put into my dull mind.

The lines of his that haunted me then and there
were —

* Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife :

To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.'

And Wordsworth's lines written at Abbotsford a year
before Scott died —

* A trouble not of clouds, or weeping rain.
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light
Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height ^'

And so on to the end of sonnet, which indeed is part
of my mind, ending with ' soft Parthenope.' It makes
me think of Virgil, whom, in a shadowy sort, I love and
regret as a friend out of reach.

What travelling is like that which takes one to the
haunts of poets and the sanctuaries of historical nations .'*

Green grow the water reeds in the moat that runs
under Dr^-^burgh, and may no one tread that fairy-like
ground that does not honour Scotland and her minstrel !

With which humble imitation of Washington Irving,
and Yanks in general, I proceed to say that I walked
home to Melrose on the road taken by Scott's funeral,
halting as the mourners did on Bemerside for his

^ Yarroiv Revisited, ii (1831).
H

98 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

favourite view — a long quiet walk, only one touristical
carriage all the way. Eildon Hills are to me henceforth
a three - headed Parnassus, and Tweed a beatified
Torridge. . .

As soon as I had recovered from the scenery, I rushed
to a shop for newspapers, and was amazed at finding
that even in Edinburgh they had no Engl'sh papers,
except that the Hotel had the inevitable Times. Truly
it is still a distinct nation.

Sunday^ Aug. 30. I did my duty by the Castle
and the Calton Hills. Reconciled to Scott's monument,
not to Nelson's. Since I was there they have put up
a Duke of Wellington on a conventional charger thrown
for ever on his haunches, and propped up by his solid
bronze tail, probably an imitation of Emanuel Philibert
at Turin. The distinct nation is not so narrow-minded
as to deny itself the glory of Wellington and Nelson ;
but I can't think of any Scotsmen honoured in London,
except Erskine, and he is hidden away in a Lincoln's
Inn cupboard. Oh, yes, we have some Napiers ; but no
Adam Smith.

Monday^ Sept. 7. Eighteen years since the sorrowful ^
and timid beginning of my professional life, I parted
with a friend whose friendship is sometimes like coals
of fire on my head; and travelling in company with
sailor-like men bearing bundles of shiny black fioats for
herring nets, turning away disconsolate from the sea
raging under a Norwester, and after one or two beautiful
glimpses of sea-coast fringed with slopes of cornfield,
I reached Berwick-on-Tweed, and made love once more
to that glorious river.

As soon as I got into England I cared for nothing

* An elder sister had died on Sept. 7, 1845.

1863] EILDON HILLS. CHARLOTTE BRONTE 99

but newspapers. Ten did I buy and read that day —
Sco/stiia)!, CouraJi/, Times, Star, Daily Nczvs, Spec-
fa tor. Illustrated Neivs, Saturday Review, &c., &c.
Down with Charlcstown !

I wished hard for the Queen to come back and make
Palmerston do his duty in stopping Laird's abominable
ship-buikling. I forgot my own affairs in an agony of
painless thought about England.

Thus ends my journal.

K. C. C, Sept. 26, 1863.

To Lord Rosebery.

Eton, Nov. 8, 1863.

Mrs. Gaskell promised my Brother a set of her
books, and gave him half a letter with the signature
of C. Bronte. Her writing is not good enough for
the author of Villette : she turns her d over, but she
writes a good .$", which I mean to take up (a Greek 9),
and she makes a in the Greek manner (a), or something
like it. . .

I brought away from Staines as my own a delightful
Kentish dog called Bob. To-day Bob went out to walk
with me, and behaved charmingly. I tied him up in
a pro forma way, and left him when I went to chapel.
After chapel he was gone ; . . . I suspect he has run
back to Staines, w^here he lately tasted blood, the blood
of a respectable parishioner, so that he cannot live there,
and must be sent back.

My present interest is in the deaf C. He lights up
when I speak to him in school, and likes being looked
over. Think what I lost during seventeen years of
teaching in rooms that were too badly lighted or too

H 2

lOO LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

noisy for me to see answering- eyes or hear gentle
answers ^. N. is almost civil, and does extra work with
my pleasant party on Wednesdays ; and H. has yielded
to coaxing, up to a temperature of about five above
freezing-point. Hartopp is very proud of having fought
at the Election riot. He says he knocked down a man ;
but we believe the man was more like a wineskin than
a man, and yielded to a push. Behind the curtain on
Wednesday, two hours after the fray, I heard Rawlins
and Lewis, K. S., asking Neville Lyttelton about his
adventures. Twice did he answer ' I got a tap on the
head,' and then they went into the depths of Plato and
Livy. . . My belief is that he knocked down three
fellow -creatures, and hurt his knuckles against some
sort of eye. Willan had two black eyes, Turnor one ;
Candy, at the peril of his life, rescued four captured
hats ; but still some people came down hatless, as I learn
from Hartopp's theme. . .

I was greatly stirred by the Emperor's speech, and
read it out at construing with trimmings — that is to say,
a quotation from ' Locksley Hall.' He is not the w^orse
statesman for indulging an ' ideologue's 'taste for visions
such as young poets and undergraduates generally take
up with, about ' a Parliament of man, a Federation of
the world.' I like him better than his uncle ; but I would
pay income-tax to put an Orleans king in his place or
in his son's place.

To Lord Rosebery.

Eton, Nov. 25, 1863.
On Sunday I read from my new book (a lovely bit of
binding) a beautiful old poem which you ought to know,

* Tlic ' New Schools ' at Eton were built in 1863.

1863] WINDSOR ELECTION. NAPOLEON III loi

Tickeirs ' Kle^ii;-y on Addison,' all about Westminster
Abbey, where I am to be next Sunday mornin^^. What
can be better than the combination of classical heroic
lines with the memor}' of classical liberal wise Addison
— mention made of statesmen and poets, in a setting of
perfect ecclesiastical associations.

Journal. KING'S College, Cambridge, Dec. 29,
1863. — My holidays began Dec. 11.

I went straight to Cambridge, reflecting on the way
pleasantly on the good performances of my division and
the increased amiability of many pupils, though my glory
as a tutor is fast fading away. . .

I had five days of the candour and vivacity of young
men, reading nothing but Mozley's Essay, writing my
reports in a charitable state of mind, making little plans
for the holidays. . . On Wednesday, Dec. 16, I reached
a very formidable house, finding a friend there for whom
I would face a battery of beaux and belles. . .

I had been at Battle Abbey on the day that Prince
Albert was buried, and that w^eek was full of the
excitement about the French. I had a comfortable
remembrance of a romping game under the cedars near
Harold's chapel, which took the edge off the terrors of
the house. It was very cold then, two years ago ; and
there were some awful old people there, colder than
the Sussex hills. This time the house was twice as
cheerful. The sublime Library, in which books are
sumptuously buried like Cheops in a Pyramid, was then
unfurnished, but is now radiant with blue velvet, and
soporifically warm. . .

In the Library I was at home, only afraid of slipping

I02 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

on the parquet. I found a folio copy of Matthew Paris,
given away a hundred years ago by some teacher with
a Dutch name to an ' ingenuus ac probus adolescens,' who
had missed the first prize ; in the middle of the page
were six lines of elegiacs about this failure, and at the
bottom ' ora pro tuo magistro.'. .

One evening I read Terence, two acts of Adelphi, out
of an Editio Princeps, or something nearly as old,
villainously printed ; not because I preferred such an
edition, but the other available copies were used by my
companions. . .

As a contrast to the merry frivolities of the lads,
I had, and I valued, the gravity and plain lengthy state-
ments of my host^, who walked with me twice, and
seemed to me, as in '6i, a truly honest and public
spirited man. I learnt one or two things from him about
politics. He said that Palmerston and Russell made up
their minds quite by themselves about foreign policy,
and did not show the other Cabinet men all the papers.
He was aware that the Polish agitation was to a great
extent factitious, and had refused when asked by Za-
moiski to take up their cause in the House. . .

One day I went upstairs to see the new bedroom in
which the two boys sleep, and Archie showed me his
father's miniature, and his best books, old prizes, and
Charles Fox's Virgil, just given him by Lady Holland,
and Chatham's letters to young Camelford, given by Lord
Stanhope with a badly written but well worded inscrip-
tion, in which he says that his nephew, to whom he gives
the book, is related to Chatham, and able to appreciate his
* lofty tone.' He showed me his collection of autographs,
one of which was beautiful and pathetic, a letter written

' Lord Harry Vane (Duke of Cleveland).

1863] BATTLE. WESTMINSTER ABBEY 103

by Lord Dalhousie to decline an invitation because he
was ' hardly presentable, for besides other tribulations
he had become quite deaf.' How I should like to write
his life, so as at least to know all about so kin^rly
a personage. I wonder whether these men who kill
themselves in making- empires were as idle at school
as our lads are : perhaps the idlers are unconsciously
obeying nature, in putting off all eifort, so that they
are accumulating a stock of activity. They get mean-
while, what we grubs do not get from our books,
the priceless courage without which one cannot be
a Dalhousie. . .

Saturday evening I spent in the Athenaeum, reading
softly. Next day four hours in the Abbey. Wordsworth
in the afternoon, just before the Anthem, discoursed
with more emphasis than force, chiefly on Jael, partly
on himself. As usual I was far more moved by the
epitaphs than by the sermons. Whenever I go there,
I linger as long as the heartless vergers will let me by
the humbler monuments, where I read in the rational
English of the eighteenth century, or in choice Sapphics,
eulogies of lost virtues ; implicitly believing that the
irrecoverable souls were as fair as the marbles say they
were, longing to know them, pitying them for being
dead, pitying their kinsfolk who lost them so long ago.
Then and there do I love my countrymen, and think
them all kind, all worthy of immortality ; friends that
have been denied me, allies whom I would fain summon
to the wars, taxpayers who helped to make this glorious
England, and who deserved to live long enough to hear,
as I have heard, of Delhi and Lucknow. Resurgant si
fieri potest. Pereat mors. Vivat Anglia.

King's Cross, Monday, Dec. 20. — 9 a.m. A gleaming

I04 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

forenoon in graceful Hertfordshire ; all alone the whole
way, so that I could, when it got cold, stand up and act
windmill till fingers warmed again.

1 p.m. The well-known station at Doncaster. . .
Nine years ago I went there for the first time, and truly
it was a great day in my rushlight life.

2 p.m. A lively gracious greeting at the door, to
which I walked up silently. . . Sir Charles ^ and Henry
out hunting : my own host at home. . . At once, under
the old inimitable spell, I became talkative, honest,
cheerful, and comparatively courteous. There was
another leaf of my mind turned over. Instead of
having to go out of my way to speak that I might
provoke a listener to think, which is my staple
employment at school, I w^as myself put upon a
luxurious rack of incessant suggestions and questions,
having a feast of opinions set before me with a constant
refrain of ' don't you think so ? ' invited oxavy minute
to commit myself to some statement, probed and teased
for all such scraps of thought or knowledge, or at least
interpretation, as my rusty memory retains, urged to
read this pamphlet and that book, never scolded for
lukewarmness, but rather thanked for contributions
towards the settlement of theories. . .

His father and the mother seem to gather virtue and
sweetness from looking at him and talking to him,
though they fight hard against his unpractical and
exploded Church views, and think his zeal misdirected,
and are very glad to hear me trying to modify his
principles. He pretends to triumph over his n. other, tp
convict her of inconsistency, to expose her half-truths,
to scout her old-fashioned notions: she fights hard,
• Sir Charles Wood ; Viscount Halifax).

1863] IIICKLETON 105

repeats herself with indomitable confidence, scolds him,
and plays the domestic Pope ; and all the while her face
gets bri<rhter and kinder because she is looking- at him.

Happy are the parents who, when they have reached
that time of life in which the world is gretting- too strong,
and virtue is a thing of routine, are quickened by the
bold, restless zeal of their sons and daughters, and so
renew their youth.

Tuesday, Dec. 21. I went with George Palmer to
follow the young sportsman Frederick Wood over the
fields on a very cold, bright day. As I was well
I enjoyed the walk and the chase of many rabbits. . .

Wednesday. We passed by the old Quarries beyond
that bank on the Barnborough road where the boy of
1855, ^^ ^^ spring, lay sketching, and was too weak to
get home without my fetching a pony for him. The
wood to the Quarries is clearer now, as there is no work
going on. The Knolls that have taken the place of
ancient rubbish -heaps, each covered or tufted with
a thorn -bush, seem to me as fit as ever for hide and
seek, for a midsummer night's dream. . .

He took us to the edge of the hill, and gave us a very
good view of the Don and the Castle ^ We crossed by
a ferry. . , We sat, cold and hungry, in a little side-
place hardly to be called a room, searched through and
through by the wind. . . Fierce was the eating, and
high the merriment ; and low and homely was our
archaeology. . . On coming down we scrambled into
a field full of picturesque lumps of limestone — ^just such
a place as would have suited the Black Dwarf; then
along the right bank of the Don, past limekilns which
reminded me of the Torridge. . .

* Coningsborough.

io6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

Then the sun fell — and I suppose that is the signal for
the stars of the soul to come out. . . For, as we stept
in rather more slowly through the darkening woodlands,
turning about boldly in full reliance on our guide, he
began to ask such questions as one does not often have
to answer :

' Tell me exactly who were the Realists — Nominalists —
Jansenists,' &c. . .

* What is the difference between the view of science
taken by men like the Bishop of Oxford and the view
which you say Mr. Tom Carter would take ? '

^ Do you care very much about your country ? '

* Do you think there might be a National Church in
Italy in unity with ours ? ' &c., &c., &c.

He told me of Mr. Liddon, the saintly and learned
preacher, of the devout worshippers at All Saints',
whose black nails show they are artisans, of Lord
Rivers' daughters working night after night in teaching
big rustic boys. . .

He listened with great interest and intelligence to all
I could tell him of Church history, particularly the
Anglo-Catholic movement.

He told me of the Society formed under the influence
of Archer Gurney to pray daily for the restoration of
Christian Unity. . , To me the process was like the
rummaging out of old broken jewels and discarded
fancy dresses, every fragment having some half-sweet,
half-quaint association.

It took me over the variations of my youth, with as
many turns and climbings as we had to make in the
woods ; and my mind as bare and dusky as the wintry
trees. . . .

I had told him that I thought such a man as Tom

I

1863] HICKLETON, DR. FA UGH AN 107

Carter would say that the final cause of civilization w.'ls
the enhancement of saintlincss by greater renunciation,
because the fairer and richer the world becomes by the
prog"ress of arts and sciences the more there is for the
saints to give up. Without pretending to hold such
views, I had said that they seemed to me a nobler way
of thinking: than the double-worldliness of those who
try to reconcile ' society ' and high secular cultivation
with the service of the Church — though I guarded
myself against being supposed to blame the people who
make themselves at home in the circles of secular
schemers and thinkers for the sake of reconciling them
to the Gospel. . .

We got to Doncaster when it was dark, and found the
Vicar ^ at home, writing- his sermon. He received us
graciously, knew who I was, told Charles Wood what he
knew about Arthur Stanley's wedding, and went on, with
an admirable mixture of candour and reserve, in clear,
deliberate, but not over-formal sentences, in correct
^ academical language, with tact and subtlety, with slow
but not insidious afterthoughts, to express his views
about the attack made by Wordsworth on Stanley.

I was quite satisfied: it was exactly the Vaughan
I had expected, evidently a very able parliamentary
man ; . . . quite fit to sit in council with Gladstone
and Westbury, capable of fighting them with their
owm weapons, quite fit to be a bishop, head of Trin.
Coll. ; fit also, I imagine, to be head of a Jesuit
seminary. . .

The Queen, says Mrs. Vaughan, was ultimately quite
reconciled to the marriage, joined the hands of the
Dean and the lady, and said to him, ' Never forsake

^ Dr. Vaughan (Dean of Llandaff ).

io8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

her, don't forget her, don'i leave her behind on the
platfortn' . . .

He [Sir Charles Wood] was so busy that he turned
over to me, on Saturday^ a batch of papers about
some ecclesiastical mares' nests which have been dis-
covered in Penang and Bombay, asking me to give
him my opinion, as Herman Merivale had referred to
him. It was quite a promotion to me. I went at the
silly job with hearty relish — enjoyed references to rotten
old Acts of Parliament ; wrote an elaborate memorandum,
and copied it out ; got thanks for it, proudly conscious
that I have had my hand for an hour on the panel of
the great State Coach. . .

It is better, perhaps, to look over State papers than
schoolboy themes ; but to look over the theme is better
than to crib sermons, or embroil clients, or gamble in
shares : and perhaps the theme -writer may some day
write a despatch on the annexation of Persia.

Anyhow, I am proud of my Cambridge friend Maine,
the poet of our time, whom we thought the truest
follower of Tennyson, the possible orator, the actual
jurist, the future legislator of Hindostan. A long
extract from his letter was shown me : he spoke of
Lord Elgin as knowing his mind better than any man
in India. He spoke with all his vivid impatience of the
perverse misruling of the law about rent in Bengal, and
with the confidence of genius about the bill he is to
bring in for the settlement of that very dangerous
question. . .

Monday, Dec. 28. I went very soon after breakfast
to the ' Studio.' . . Here we were all at work tying
with twine and wire toys, oranges, and wax tapers, to
be ready for the spruce fir in the village schoolroom.

1863] IIICKLETON. CHRISTMAS TREE 109

I'rassy and g^reasy were one's fingers ... we persevered,
and got some credit in the long run. All the things
l)(M'ng armed with strings, I carried a flasket full of tied
tilings down to the village, whilst F. scared off the
children for fear lest they should penetrate our mysteries
too soon. . . We had a long and pretty task in hanging
things to the tree. . .

At sunset came the Squire, and all, to see our trophy:
in trooped the grown-up people of the village ; a dear
shepherd-dog, inseparable from his master, the clerical-
looking coachman ; a bent old man called Kay with a
foolish wig ; plenty of ugly stupid women, all wondering
at the brilliancy of the illuminated tree ; somehow or
other they sllpt away and made room for the forty
children who steadfastly gazed at the lower branches, ate
buns with astonishing silence, and in due time received
three or four trifles apiece cut off the tree. F. W.
escorted old Kay home, and was late for dinner. The
rest of us, all but the manager, went back in procession
through awful darkness, by a new mysterious way»
helped by a lantern, just as we used to come back from
evening parties in Torrington. I cannot help feeling
that summer feasts are much better things for poor
children, and that they had better earn their toys in
games and races. But there was something patriarchal
in this gathering of a whole village ; a perfect family
unity, great simplicity, and plenty of tepid benevolence.
When Armytage goes to dust there will be a fervid
parsonuncle who will aim at something grander ; there
will at least be singing before the tea-drinking.

That night, whilst we played whist, Mrs. Grey and her
daughter and niece sang to us, far off. What can people
do better in this glimmering labyrinth called life than

no LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

sing together, * each hand upon a sister's shoulder laid,'
as Wordsworth says.

Late as we were in going to bed, Charles came to my
room as usual, for it was my last night; his loving
youngest brother came too ; and after our chat was over
I could hear them upstairs laughing with or at their
mother, whom they visited in her room. There can be
no happier mother in Yorkshire.

Tuesday, Dec. 29. I did as I was told, having slid
back into the old habit of compliance. I went to see
the hounds meet at Marr. They put me on Brown
Bess, who behaved perfectly. . . It was a pleasant
swift ride through Melton Woods : I had to turn and
come back alone for fear of being late for the train.
Bess must have been disappointed ; but she was very
amiable, and took me, softly as the West wind, along
the beloved road under the crags to the thorns, where
I drew bridle, and thought once more it was the place
for Merlin to be entranced in. . .

Lady M. gave me a fragrant geranium-leaf at parting,
and the boy saw me off; and in two hours I had
relapsed into my average dullness.

Journal. Eton, Feb. 2. — School at 7.30. . . Took
pains in explaining the similarity of Elisha's and Paul's
miracles, the difference of the credibility of what is said
about Paul and what is said of Apollonius Tyanaeus and
other rather hard topics. . . Sunday work very well
(lone . . . evidently boys take interest in it. . .

9.45. Came Warre to consult about a very hard bit of
Thucydides : my old notes taken in 1843 cleared it up.

.864] DIARY OF WORK AT ETON 11 j

He told me of a grand passage in Aristotle's Ethics^
which he had just done with F. Hervey. I read it : it
is a proof that the best man loves himself, even in his
most heroic self-sacrifice ; for he lets his friend have
a prize, or, what is dearer, the chance of action ; and for
his country he will die, yet all the while he keeps for
himself covetously the honour. (Three cheers!)

Feb. 2i- — 1 1.8. Greek play in school. Set Iambics
out of Mat. Arnold to volunteers. Found D., who is
very low in class, staying on to copy some pencilled
Iambics of mine that were in the book, evidently wishing
to learn the art, which was a merciful invention of
Mercury for prosaic boys. Enjoyed teaching them the
metre, with some improvement in the method — some
very^ orderly minds at work. . .

5.10. Read Lardner on the divisibility of matter for
five minutes, that I might lecture on Atoms, apropos to
Cicero, in school, which went off pretty well : explained
the difference between atom and elemejit^ between
mixture and combination ; told them the difference
between Lucretius' mechanical theory of atoms and
Dal ton's chemical.

Noticed how odd it was that the Romans, who could
speak of formae literarum aureae vel qualeslibet,' should
not have hit upon movable type for printing.

Lectured on is qui with subjunctive.

6.0. Prepared the feast of Greek for Rawlins, Lewis,
Lyttelton, and having dined (with the help of Mac-
miUa7i's Magazine article on 'A French Eton') was
ready at 7.0 for them.

They did a fine passage of Sophocles, in which Electra
scolds her w^eak sister for not siding with the dead
father against the living mother, and glories in avenging

112 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

him by spiting her, wearing bad clothes, and the like.
Item, a delightful bit of Demosthenes, where he taunts
Aeschines for not contributing to a fund for his country's
defence, when all that ever spoke on the bema gave
something, and Aristonicus gave the money he had
saved up to recover his franchise with (by paying some
fine to the State), Item, the sublime passage of the
Ethics, which lifted up the lads and made them wonder.
I took care to tell them that I got it from Warre.

Item, my favourite bit of Plato, where Theodorus
introduces to Socrates the teachable, quick, even-minded
Theaetetus, the ideal listener, telling Socrates that the
boy is like him in having a snub nose and ugly eyes,
but speaking with motherly joy of his sweet nature. . .

I looked over Dalmeny s verses : to alter them was
a long, delicate job, as they were not commonplace
pro forma things, but an honest attempt at turning
(of his own accord) some rhymes of mine which he had
read in manuscript on the French lady who, on her
deathbed, made her page play on the lute ' La Defaite
des Suisses,' till he came to ' Tout est perdu,' then made
him go over it again, and died murmuring those last
sad words. . .

Peb, 4. — 7.0. F. Wood came to play chess with North -
cote. I went the other side of the curtain and taught
English history to Joynes's boys ; they were very atten-
tive. . . It was a series of names of people, their rela-
tionships, losses and gains in wars and treaties, outlines
of policy, reasons for this and that — very rapid, and
hammered in without mercy.

8.0. . . My lower boys did French : read three or
four pages of the beautiful book, Alfred de Vigny's
Servitude et Grandeur Miliiaires. . . I put them once

1 36.,] SUNDAY PRIVATE BUSINESS 113

more throui^h the I^Vcnch kino^^i from Louis XIV to
Louis Philippe, and told them about Due d'Enghien and
(jeneral Clark Kennedy, the Waterloo man who had
just died.

8.45. Looked over some French exercises with the
boys. Incidentally boys like F. Wood and Dalmeny
learn a little by hearing- me talk over the mistakes :
I appeal to them when in doubt, but I am getting to
trust myself more than I did at first. . .

J^ed. 6. — 10.30. Construing: then I made out my
Sunday questions ; one of them was a comment on
' Laborare est orare ' — in setting it I read to them from
Milman s Church History about the origin of the Cis-
tercians, which was also one of the two subjects for
theme : tried to create some interest about Benedict of
Nursia and his great discovery, ' the holiness of labour,'
whereby slavery was stormed in its fortress. Another
thing they have to answer is, ' What has become of the
precious marbles in the Temple of Ephesian Artemis ? '
another about usury in the Book of Nehemiah.

It is the only exercise they have to do which admits
of research and variety : gradually it has dawned on me
that they take a special interest in it.

Explained the theory of oaths, apropos to the state-
ment of the Plataeans in Thucydides that they promised
but did not swear : no, that was yesterday ; middle
voice and ' indefinite frequency ' to-day.

12.0. A little shopping: got my partition put up to
keep off the cold ; read the Spectator newspaper ; talked
to Senhouse and Parker from Christ Church ; warmed
myself, . .

4.0. Verse making and lessons with Fourth Form. . .
A note to Browning, controversial — a relief to my mind

I

114 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

— neatly enveloped and addressed, but discreetly dropt
into my pocket.

5.30. Dined on a grilled fowl, talking foreign policy
with Northcote expeditiously ; read a very amusing part
of the Odyssey with him by way of pudding ; set him to
work at theme ; looked over the themes of the friendly
Wodehouse and his mates ; Grant looked brisk ; W. and
Francis amused themselves by trying on Wilson's gown.
Baring, unabashed by the romping and chattering, did
verses by himself on the death of Empedocles.

9.0. Hartopp came for his verses on Madeira, wished
for a war because going into the army ; Cyril, who
came soon afterwards, did not wish it, because his
brother is in the army. They ate nuts and drank Lunel
whilst I drank tea. . .

Last night after journal I read a good deal of an old
volume of Edmbzirgh Review^ including Maine's elegant
little article on Midsummer Night's Dream, an enlarge-
ment of an essay which he read before our Society at
Cambridge. I remember how proud I was of its being
in the Review, and how eager for knowledge I was
that year, when Herschel reviewed Humboldt's Cosmos^
and I soared beyond classical purlieus, little thinking
that after all I was to be nothing but a third-rate
grammar- monger.

Now to bed, to read newspapers and melt the rough-
ness off my abject throat.

Average work for the six days about nine hours :
how little it seems ! yet how hard it would be for me to
do anything else— except, indeed, such work as writing
this Journal !

Sunday, Feb. 7. . . I spent three hours alone, chiefly
reading Milman's hi.s/ory 0/ Latin Christianity that

iiio4] CHURCH HISTORY LESSONS 115

I niioht have something to say at 8.0 ; also Carter s
sermons. I wrote three letters full of bitterness about
the frustrated reform of my Collei^e.

2.0. My young boys gathered round the fire : I read
them bits of Cowper, a good passage about the wicked-
ness of ambitious kings, Alex. Selkirk and the Castaway.
Told them about Cowper and Huskisson : they filled in
the dropt rhymes, and were intelligent. They read to
me some chapters of Nehemiah — the bit about Ezra
telling the people not to weep ; and then St. Paul's
parting w^ith the elders of Ephesus. . .

I w\as sorry when they went, being chilly and dull ;
fell asleep. . .

7.0. I formed my party of seven round the fire . . .
a gentle set, not very clever, but sufficiently cultivated,
with frivolity for the hour banished. I told them a good
many things about the Church history of Elizabeth's
days, and got them to read out long bits of Collier. . .
They must have learnt something about the principles
of the English Church, partl}^ because I have gone over
some of the points several times ; at least they know
more than their fathers knew at the same age. They
behaved so well that I was truly sorry to part with
them.

8.0. The room was filled with the next set, eleven. . .
I lectured them on Church history, on the Roman theory
of development, the Anglo -Catholic theory of tradition,
the rational theory of tradition compared with the un-
doubted writings of the Apostles. We made references
to the First Book of Corinthians, which we are sup-
posed to be reading. I told them about Cassian, Jerome,
Martin of Tours, Benedict of Nursia, Gregory the Great,
and reminded them of Clemens Romanus, Diocletian,

1 2

ii6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

Constantlne, Theodosius, Boethius, &c. Some of them
showed some knowledge — at least more than I had at
their age. . .

This day at least I have done something — rash, per-
haps, but not commonplace — that was not connected
with my duties as an usher ; and by way of change
I enjoy it, though it may cost me dear. A little
strife with men sometimes would be an agreeable
change.

I have been to-day with twenty-seven boys, all of
whom have been cheerful, orderly, attentive, and seem-
ingly free from any grudge against me. Not a bad
Quinquagesima, though I have begun, perhaps, a quarrel
with certain Kingsmen.

F'ed. 8. School very difficult because of the cough-
ing which comes of their rushing in hurriedly, opening
their mouths. I have no voice to make head against it,
and had to bring down the quiet A. and B. from the
top form to get them within talking range and bring
something out of them ; whereby I got the comfort of
seeing A.'s pious face — he seems to live in a Church
that goes everywhere with him. I discoursed as well as
I could on Spenser, from whom I set verses, a bit on
mutability ; corrected some of their frantic anachronisms,
and explained that the Faerie Qtieene and the Divine
Comedy were not epics — this was let into the parsing
like a line of gold thread. . .

5.15. The hardest lesson in the week— Cicero on the
proofs of creative Providence. I had glanced at WheweU's
Bridge water treatise on As/ronomy^ and had found
the place in Bentley s lecture, ' Confutations of Atheism,'
where he follows Cicero's argument against Lucretius.
So I had something to say ; told them about Ptolemy,

iS64] SCHOOL AND PUPIL ROOM 117

Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, &c. ; found that several
of them o-ave all the credit to Galileo; told them about
Kentley and Boyle, who endowed the Lectures. D. came
to borrow the volume of Bentley which had been passed
about and looked at. . .

My pio;-eons go forth, and bring back little sprays
from the olive tree of truth, which it is so hard for an
elderl}^ man, encumbered with vanity, mannerism and
authority to approach. Fiam lenior accedente senecta.
Ten hours' work to-day, some of it fatiguing, but only
because of the East wind. Ten hours spent in a Goshen
of complaisance, simplicity, gaiety, and as much mental
activity as I nowadays expect. . .

Pcb. 9. — 10.30. A splendid bit of Virgil — Evander's
lament for his son — full of grammar, idiom, and senti-
ment. I tried the patience of the boys with wanton
digressions till we were getting late for school.

In school the same Virgil : not a boy could construe
the hard lines properly ; they had wretched editions ; if
I had not been so hoarse I should have railed at them.
In the midst of the exposition came the Head Master's
servant to say that they were wanted at 11.30 to hear
Speeches, so that the grand lesson was broken up, and
this by men who profess to care for classics : may Virgil's
ghost rebuke them !

Talked outside in the sun with my old comrade John
Yonge about the lesson : we taught each other in a
simple way. He told me — what I had forgotten — that
Lord Falkland turned out, as a Sors^ the lines we had
just been reading about ' dura rudimenta,' &c. . . Think
that a thousand years hence they will quote Virgil.

11.40. Themes, or rather versions— lukewarm Latin,
anyhow.

ii8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

Miscellaneous business with some brats. Shute set
down to verses by himself.

12.40. F. Wood and I went out, ride and tie, up the
bank of the still, cold river, taking it by turns to give
Myrtle a canter, in which the dogs shared. . .

At Surley corner was a regular picture, a barge laden
with wood, with the slenderest, straightest thread of
smoke at each end, one horse pulling it down stream,
the poplars behind, Myrtle and her glowing young
rider in the foreground. . .

Galloped back in time to release the captive, who had
done nine verses on Cassandra — alone for forty minutes —
finished Latin prose work ; then came N. Lyttelton with
a bit of Greek prose, done from Hooker, rather a good
job. Then Hale for a gossip. Then I wrote a vicious
letter to the Windsor paper about the unbearable filthi-
ness of the College streets. 345. Small boys came for
verses, &c., and I read sundry bits of Greek and Latin
and choice bits of Motley's Dutch Repzcblic, though
wishing to sleep. . .

7.0. S. Lyttelton, and others, took notes of my cate-
chetical lecture on the history of the fight against
Phihp II ; sometimes they read aloud the passages, ready
for them, in Motley. So they were introduced to the
scholar-warriors Ste. Aldegonde and Francois de la
Noue (Bras de Fer), to the heroic Louis of Nassau and
his mother Juliana, to my favourite doctrine about
chivalry — that it is a sentiment engendered by literature,
and never fairly developed till the sixteenth century,
when men read the Bible and Plutarch. . .

«S.(). Then we got into a sublime passage where Socrates
says that Ai)ollo has made him a philosopher, examining
himself and others — and he was as much bound to do

1864] ACHILLES. DE LA NOUE 119

this at all hazards as he was hound to vStand in hattlc
where the generals bade him stand — and quotes the story
of Achilles tehinty- his mother that he will avenge his
friend, even thouo^h she foretells that he must die — for
how could he stay to be taunted amongst the vi^vaX KopcoznVt,
and cumber the earth. And, hoarse as I was, I made
them see that this w^as a wonderful thing for Socrates to
say : that even then literature was the well-spring of
noble thouglits : that the record of his words stirred
Cicero, and he, through Valerius Maximus, kept up some
idea of virtue in the Middle Ages ; and that when they
came to read Cicero himself in the fifteenth century they
began to be more noble, and became still more noble
in the days of ' Bras de Fer,' when they read not only
Cicero but Euripides, Plutarch and the Psalms. . .

Eight hours' employment — and I do not feel older
after it.

Wednesday (commonly called Ask)^ Feb. 10. — 7.30.
School, the last chapter of both Timothies — half the
boys got punishments for being late — this is one of
the results of our hateful irregularities ; for if we began
every day with a regular lesson or prayers no one w^ould
be late. I railed. Took refuge in the good and steady
lads who have too much self-respect to be late, and read
with them ; expounded the peculiarly ecclesiastical nature
of these epistles, the liturgical flow of some passages,
the germs of a Creed found herein, the obscure nature
of the evidence about the government of the early
Church, &c., &c. . .

8.45. Times at the fireside ; F. W. late for breakfast
because of prayers at 9.0.

Took it easy by way of keeping Lent : did some
exercises, read Latin and Greek for Rawlins, which

I20 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

I found more edifying than the curses of the Jewish
law. . .

Friday, Feb. 12. — 1.5. I was on Myrtle, with a dog
at each stirrup, the soft rain in my face, and the kind
wind coming to me from my home : so I galloped
blindly — for the rain disabled the spectacles — up the river
as usual, but further than usual, even to Bray ; back the
same way, chirruping to the dogs and meditating on
Colenso, whether it would be expedient to subscribe.

To Rev. C. W. Fttrse.

London, April 14, 1864.

I wrote to you from Rome on the morning of Monday
the 4th. . .

That morning I sent the boys to see the old woman ^
at the Minerva, and they were mightily pleased with
him(.^) and the other nondescripts.

I strolled out promiscuously, hit upon the Pantheon,
and knew it by sight ; saw a church with fleur de lys on
it, and found it was dedicated to St. Louis of France,
which was rather gratifying ; crossed the Tiber, sauntered
through mild, quiet, not very dirty regions for ten
minutes, and then to the left, by a bridge and an island,
back to the Temple of Vesta, just as I wished. On by
the river-bank to the li^nglish burial-ground: a charming,
quiet, vSpring morning, birds singing in the cypresses,
no other sound ; saw the graves properly ; home over
the Aventine (where one gets no view) and Trajan's
Forum. Out again with Dalmeny ... he wanted to see
St. Peter s and St. John Lateran ; so we did both, and
made a vain attempt at the Sistine. At the Lateran we

> Pius IX.

,864] JOURNAL AT ROME 121

were happy, rcadino- ilu- Inscrlj^tions on the monu-
ments. . . We had a royal view of the beautiful hills.

Then we walked back by Coliseum, stumbled upon
Cloaca Maxima, with which I was charmed and the boy
diso^^usted ; we agreed, however, about the two bell-
towers, St. Ceorge^ I think, and Mouth of Truth, and
1 enjoyed them all the more because I had never heard
of them. Indeed, I think the second is the prettiest thing
in Rome, and w^ell worth imitation as a church tower.
So I took the lad to Keats 's grave, as we had nothing
else to do, and I suppose I am the only man that ever
went there twice in one day.

Negatively I enjoyed my escape from the babble about

art. tried it on wuth me, but I at once indicated

a preference for Paris, and in other ways showed myself
Vandal enough to be left to invincible ignorance. He
was so cjood as to suoforest that I should devote the
morning to Overbeck's studio ! On a rainy day there
might be something to be said for it ; but as a general
rule one bears sea-sickness and diligence-grind for the
sake of the old rocks and the inexhaustible sky.

All the artists of this century are dust compared to
the creeper that hung like a child's uncombed hair over
a white garden wall near the Lateran, a handful of
the largesse scattered by spring.

April 5 we went to Civita Vecchia, and took dili-
gence for Follonica. This w^as an austere journey, all
the length of the Maremma— coming down with a scream
to a dark river (Ombrone), and w^aiting on the bank for
a ferry-boat coming to us silently wath a Cyclops light.
One village ever)^ five hours. Ninety-four miles of
wilderness without rails. . .

' Sta. Francesca.

122 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

That day we had the loveliest sunset at Leghorn ; and
in the street at night we saw the awful and deeply
interesting sight of the Misericordia^ the black -calicoed
masked men, with one great torch, tramping fiercely
down the street, and stopping at a gin-palace for the
coffin : this I watched, standing amongst the street
children, who did not seem frightened ; but if anything
could add to the terrors of death it would be that mass
of live blackness. . .

Two days of brilliant weather at Paris. . .

We saw Sainte Chapelle, which is a gem ; Notre Dame,
where it is charming to hear the sacristan holding forth
about the true modern martyr, the Archbishop of Paris,
slain at the barricades in trying to make peace. They
show you his vertebra with the bullet, a picture of his
death, his robes, &c., &c. It is a remarkable synthesis
of hagiology with scientific truth. His death is as fine
a thing as you can find in any part of Church history.

We saw the tomb of Napoleon, which is a poor
concern ; we went to a review of 3,000 cavalry, which
was beautiful ; we heard some fresh, brilliant music,
Gounod's Mireille\ we shopped; we talked politics and
history. Dalmeny is a strong but wise admirer of both
Napoleons. Altogether he must be the wisest boy that
ever lived— and full of fun, too.

To A. H. Drum7Jio7id.

Eton, May 13, 1864.

Read the Lt/e of Sir William Napier. . . I now read
the new Life of Wolfe. They are both l)ooks which an
officer shouki read airefully, making notes.

If you don't fill your head in your youth you will Ixi

1864] LETTER TO A YOUNG SOLDIER 123

found ' Menc, Tckcl, Upharsin ' when the time comes to
take command .ind liave influence.

This is just what the concjucror of Scinde says most
emphatically. It is all very well to trust to animal spirits
and tact in early life ; but when the bloom is g-one an
empty-headed man has but little influence. I find William
Napier saying-, quoting- the Duke, too, that half our
operations are ruined by stupid generals of division.
Men of uncultivated minds are generally stupid at forty,
except in their own groove.

To Hon. F. IVood.

July 24, 1864.

The life of the last summer month at Eton is probably
as happy as any kind of life. It is pleasure set in a
framework of duties : the daily obligations are, as it
were, the hem that keeps the garment from unravelling.
What else is there that makes pleasure respectable ?
would you not be ashamed of it if there were no yoke
to bear ? With you it seems to be the staple of life, not
a diversion or a refreshment after toil. Would life be
honourable, would mankind be respected by angels, if
we all lived always in pleasure } This is the question
Cicero asks. But w^hen the ancients speak contemp-
tuously of pleasure, they mean something very different
from what you enjoy. Your pleasure consists in good
fellowship above all things : there is nothing solitary
about it — nothing like sitting ' each under his own vine,
his own fig-tree, drinking his owm cup.'

The essence of the life which you enjoy here and
remember proudly is brotherly and neighbourly sym-
pathy. In the most easily-remembered periods of this
kind of life you are making common sacrifices, joint

124 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

efforts, you have hopes and fears towards which many
minds converge. What is dull and wearisome here is
taken patiently because you bear it together : it is when
some are exempt, when there is a doubt about exemp-
tion, when it is not certain whether you are expected
to do a thing or not, that discontent arises. At the
universities duty becomes more irksome, because there
is so little there of universal obligation, and perfect,
certain obligation. But then you substitute for the
routine school duties private studies which bear dis-
tinctly on your own success. At college a man is divided
in life : partly he is working for and with others, partly
he is struggling against others for a place. It is a less
beautiful or poetical form of life than the Eton form.

But the desire of knowledge is stronger: the power
of gaining knowledge is greatly increased, the perception
of the value of intellect is greatly quickened. From
college you will look back with some regret for lost
opportunities of gaining knowledge ; but it is not certain
that you will be justly reproaching yourself for negli-
gence. Perhaps there is much offered here which can
be taken only in fragments and by reflection.

As vsoon as you are out of the ' chamber of maiden
thought,' at once you begin to regret, to repine. The
poets say that in youth we love autumn. High pleasure
comes to us tempered and blended with regret, with
a sense of insufficiency, witli regard, as we say, that is,
looking back.

This is the keynote of poetry. This is the mystery
of music: the sense that we lose, have lost, something —
that there is something we cannot reach that there is
infinity which we cannot reach.

l\'rhaps the most exalted state of a man's mind is

1864] AN ETON BOY'S LAST SUMMER 125

that in wliicli he strains after a comprehension of all
that is most excellent in mankind — when he is seized
with a sweeping- theory of history, animated with a
lonor-ino- hope of universal human progress, dreaming,
like the man in ' Locksley Hall,' of a golden year that
is to be, when the wars shall cease and the nations shall
be made one, or praying early and late for an universal
Church w ithout rent or scar. In such aspirations there
must ahvays be, with pure and noble minds, a sweetness
and a bitterness too. In the best hours of generous
youth one must mourn over one's weakness and limited
range, one must deplore the hindrances presented by
society w^hich make it impossible to know all men, to
act w4th all classes : one must hate the diversities which
keep nations apart : one must love zealously those few
men of one's acquaintance who are above prejudice, who
are truly liberal, who seem to be incapable of giving
way to the w^orld. In the very age of great catholic
ideas one is really drawn most closely to the {qw.
Pleasure is then found in the hearty alliance and out-
spoken communications of a select body of men of one's
owai age.

Then comes the desire to influence others : and every
moment comes disappointment. You find that you
cannot have things your own way. Even a child or
a servant beats you ; a family attorney is impregnable,
a churchwarden shakes off your zeal as a seal throws off
water ; a brother magistrate or a Government officer
makes you feel very yotmg.

Then comes the doubt whether one is meant to do
anything but take care of one's own skin, or save one's
own soul, or continue, in a well-marked rut, the course
of one's own family.

126 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

Then you are tempted to acquiesce in the world's
ways, to admit that there is nothing to be done but
smile and avoid committing yourself and make the best
of every chance of getting something for yourself and
your own kinsfolk.

When this time comes, it would be well if one could
vividly bring before one the very happiest and noblest
part of one's early youth. The remembrance of what
you felt and intended when you were confirmed, or
when you were leaving school, or when you lost some
dear friend or relation, would have a great effect in
saving you from going back to Egypt. If you had
a journal, or a bundle of letters, or a book of poetry
with marks in it, or a biography of some good man
that you had read and been moved by, it would be
a countercharm, it would be like the plant that Mercury
gave to Ulysses.

Journal. ETON, Sttnday.Jtily 24, 1864. — I wrote two
sheets full of outlines of a discourse on youth and its
rising above the world. I wrote with hardly an erasure,
and finished what looks complete, in time for Church.

We were not out of Church till 12.30, when my
listeners met. I began my talk easily by speaking to
R. Lewis about his essay on music which he is to write
— its effects— its use in training — rhythm — form — how to
the performers it is finite, regular, formal ; how to non-
musicians who have imagination it suggests the infinite,
awakens longings that we cannot satisfy ; how this desire
for what is unattainable blends with all our pleasure,
which is not the ' pleasure ' spoken of by the old pagan
philosophers ; that our pleasure, as soon as we become
men, is indissolubly blended with regret, remembrance,

1864] PUPILS TAKING LEAVE 127

reiTfard ; that early manhood is a sort of autumn ; that we
repine, reproach ourselves, < ften with njustice, &c., &c.

One notion followed another, and I was helped by
what I had written, hut not bound by it.

Amonqr other thinofs I told the lads that manhood
will bring- them Ephphatha, that they will some day
* dare to seem as good and generous as they are.'
A strange sermon : but they listened, and answered
me when I questioned them of their own experience ;
and my friend, in the evening, gladly took my MS. to
keep for his brother to read ; so perhaps I had as
much success as the dignitary with his pulpit. . .

Jicly 2j. I had a peculiar pleasure — a letter from the
father of a boy who had been in my division, thanking
me for making his boy's work pleasant to him ; the most
gratifying letter I ever had on professional matters.

At 10.45 we separated lingeringly, three or four taking
copies of the Vale . . . then I had to sit up to do work
for school. . .

Thursday^ July 28. This morning I gave a lecture
on the examination papers, and told the boys how they
had done. By 10 a.m. all school work was over.

At breakfast we had Charles Wood's eager proposal
that I should go at once to Hickleton. It was a great
help towards breaking the fall.

But there was nothing to comfort me in parting with
Holland ; and he was the picture of tenderness.

He and others stayed a good time, talking in the
ordinary easy way — no confessional — and one by one
they shook hands ; first N. Lyttelton, veiling his grief at
leaving school in his quaint hard Stoic manner, shaking
hands with X. — they used to hate each other, but have
been great friends this summer. Then R. Hussey spent

128 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

some time with me, copying- out two of his honoured
exercises into my book whilst I did business. M. Lewis
came, and his shyness did not prevent my saying what
I wished to say to him. But to Holland I could say
nothing" : now that I am writing about it I cannot bear to
think that he is lost.

They were all gone : I had been plunged into bills
and rummagings, when I had visits fro C. Moore and
Douglas Hope, who came as his shadow. We had a
very friendly, cordial chat, and as they were going, I
found that they wanted copies of the Vale.

Last of all came for the last time the boy who
has been my companion, the constant helpmate in my
troubles ; he was grave, pitying me ; as he has always
been truly compassionate in my illnesses and gloomi-
nesses.

What a world it is for sorrow. And how dull it would
be if there were no sorrow.

I went to luncheon, and thought the lady who has
made our evenings beautiful with music seemed as sad
as I was.

Friday, July 29. I wrote letters in the shady room
with the birds behind me : a very elaborate one to Lady
H. about her boy's being- made to write, and not having
everything done for him by private tutors ; a hopeful
letter about one who is getting to be very interesting.
Item, a delicate and complimentary account of W.,
perhaps the smartest bit of writing I ever turned out,
and strictly veracious. Item, a good account of P. and
G., whom we have certainly improved. . .

6.30. Dined at Egham Vicarage, met the Right Hon.
Wm. Monsell, M.P., Catholic, an excellent man who is
coming back to the Ministry. . . He talked with the

1O04] MR. MOXSELL AND NEIVMAN 129

greatest openness about Newmans Apologia^ quite
pleased to find that we had read it ; he was quite proud
of it.

' How remarkable that after a long- and general con-
spiracy to silence him he should regain the ear of the
nation. Dr. Dcillinger, the highest authority in our
Church, says it is the most important work he knows,
even ranking it with St. Augustine's Confessions.

'Longman pressed Newman for the MS., so as to
bring out a number every week : in twenty-four hours
he spent tw^enty-two hours writing ^

' He was not appreciated in Ireland, nor is he by the
Italianizing party in our Church. He went to Birmingham
because he was told to go there : they should have sent
him to London. He is made happy by the general
reception of his book^ by finding that men are still
attached to him.

' He did write the pamphlet against Peel about
Mechanics' Institutes.

' He has more faith in the providence of God than
any man I ever knew.'

These were some of the things said by this personal
friend of Newman.

^ See Nineteenth Century for Sept. 1896, ' Recollections of Cardinal
Newman,' by Aubrey De Vere.

Archdeacon Furse writes, Oct.22, 1896,35 follows : ' Once when visiting
Cardinal Newman I happened to tell him that Wm. Monsell reported to
me that he had on one occasion given about twenty hours out of the
twenty-four to the composition of the Apologia. The Cardinal smiled, and
said " Did I ? I forget. If Wm. Monsell told you that I said so, I am sure
I did. I was a good deal younger then." He then rose from his chair,
and leaning his elbows on the chimneypiece, half buried his face in his
hands, and said slowly and with pauses, " But I never told him — I never
told any one — that half the time I was writing that book I was in floods
of tears." '

K

I30 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

Sunday^ July 31. I walked alone, with a quick step,
having a tune in my head and the wind in my face, down
the river-bank past Pentonhook Lock, where in 1836
we beat Westminster, which was the happiest and most
heroic day of my early school life. Does any boy now
feel the elevation of heart that I felt that day ? How
I loved the bargees that cheered our returning barouche
in Windsor street, when we came back with our blue
ribbons triumphant, having shirked 6 o'clock absence
with Keate's connivance. Poor bargees, all dead by
this time.

I read Newman's Apologia, and was deeply moved
by the end of the main work, before the Appendix,
where he thanks his friends: but I concluded after all
that he is not single-minded, for he shifts over from the
philosopher's to the simple believer's attitude ; he is
bound to give a wise man's, not a woman's, defence of his
new creed, and to refute the arguments he once used
against it.

Maplrdurham, Reading, Monday, Aug. i. — I had
a charming drive from Reading over Caversham Bridge
and through the private road of Caversham Warren,
under shade and past fresh green crops, to Mapledurham.
A lovely land, where the poplars are big and stand far
apart, and are in contrast with symmetrical oaks or cedars,
as the mellow chimneys of old red brick are with the
scarps of chalk, and the piles of shaped logs of beech-
wood stand on the banks waiting for the barges, and
mallow, breast-high, blooms in rivalry with loose strife,
and the mill has a wheel with broad teeth like the
Torrington mill, and the Catholic squire's house has the
Protestant church crouching at its gateway, as it did in
the days of the Plantagenets.

1864] VISIT TO MAPLEDURIIAM 131

Mr. Coleridi^e ^ \N'as very gracious and full of com-
munications : . . . he called me ' Hilly ' every five
minutes with the utmost gravity. He told me about
Newman, whom he wishes to write to or even to visit
and renew his old friendship : they are of the same age.
Newman was a good mimic : kept his satirical spirit
under control, in print, till he turned Catholic : ought
now to apologize for having satirized Keble and Pusey.
(I suggest that he cannot be asked formally to unsay
anything: one must be content with his having practi-
cally cancelled the satire by resuming the language of
respect.) He has printed nothing in the Apologia that
bore upon his old friends without submitting the proof-
sheets to them. Keble said to Coleridge : ' By all means
go to see him, if you are at Birmingham. I would give
anything to do so myself. He still loves his old friends
much more than his new Catholic friends.' ' Those who
know Newman (says Coleridge) know that he sometimes
sits weeping for two days together.'

He never let himself become a confessor of women.
Pusey gave it up : was disgusted or wearied with it.
Pusey, Keble, and others, being- asked, advised Coleridge
not to attempt the confessional with his pupils. . .

Coleridge was as bitter as Wm. Monsell was, against
Kingsley, and as tender to Newman. He agreed with
me in thinking that Newman had not (yet was bound to
have) refuted his old arguments for the English Church.

I read the article on Public Schools in the Edinburgh,
and felt quite ready to join in a school that should do
w^ithout Greek and Latin. The hopeless thing is that
the Universities give such overwhelming reasons for

^ Rev. Edward Coleridge, Fellow of Eton and Rector of Maple-
durham.

K 2

132 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

keeping- up the dead languages. This the writer for-
gets. . .

My best wishes for the Comet's journey ; and when
he comes back may he find slavery and bigotry melted
away.

Aug. 4. Went to Athenaeum, and read like a butterfly
all the evening: a bad article in the Dublin Review.,
a very good one in the Christian Remembrancer on the
great Apologia : observed how far superior the Anglican
piety and taste are to the Roman. . . Began a new book
about Jeanne d'Arc by the high-minded lady who wrote
the memoir of Helene d'Orleans, and found her tone of
mind quite poetical and rather philosophical. . .

HiCKLETON, DONCASTER, Thursday.— Ak^v food
Charles Wood took me out to pick ferns and grasses
for decoration, which he afterwards effected very skilfully,
reminding me of his primrose chains wrought ten years
ago : in the wood we met just one kissing shower, the first
rain I have heard pattering on green leaves this year. . .

At dinner my host observed to his wife that he had
all his four boys together — and well might he be proud
of them. . . We discussed the voluntary surrender of
Gibraltar, which the eldest son vigorously advocated. . .

In the library Charles made me talk to him : I told him
everything I could think of that would interest him ; he
was insatiable : truly the desire to be taught comes at
the wrong time for schoolmasters. How gladly would
I bring out my humble stores to the regular customers,
the boys of seventeen, in school and pupil-room — and
they will have none of them. . . I received to-day
a letter from W., very affecting, even in my lethargy.
Quis vcl cjunlis sum ego, quem tanto amorc dignentur
boni viri ?

t864] CONVERSATIONS AT HICKLETON 133

Priday, An(^. 5. 1 read, and made a few statistical
extracts from Sir Charles Trevelyan's minute on a gold
currency for India, and had a talk about it with the
Secretary ^ : tried to impress upon him that if his five-
rupee notes were good, as no doubt they are, so would
one-rupee notes be ; that if silver coins were tokens, it
was a pity to waste so expensive a substance in making
them ; that coin bearing a real intrinsic value is really
wanted only for clearing international accounts after
striking balances ; that the Hindoos had advanced
a good deal beyond their superstitious habits of hoard-
ing, and might advance, probably were advancing,
gradually towards a rational habit of embodying wealth
in securities or claims. Laid down my favourite doctrine
that money is purchasing power, &c. Satisfactory talk.
. . . Charles talked to me at night : we considered what
knowledge was useful, and concluded that it was fair
and easy to say that there was no such thing as useful
knowledge, except in so far as the sciences and arts are
useful in enabling people to attain that leisure which
breeds refinement. ' It seems that the best thing to do
is to join hands and so drift to the grave together,' said
one ; and the other did not gainsay it. . .

Saturday, A ug. 6. I told Charles that I wished him to
read things that did not interest him, such as books
about the English Constitution, &c. (so much for our
renunciation of knowledge). I warned him against the
danger of prolonging boyhood unduly and remaining
in a family groove. . .

Sunday, Aug. 7. I tried to read a little Descartes,
and then a little Voltaire, but was draw^n into one of the
old charming talks with my two friends ; and they paid

^ Sir Charles Wood.

134 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

me a visit in my bedroom afterwards, and then left me
to make this record of three days, which would be called
happy if I thought myself capable of happiness. . .

The late Earl Grey had some trouble in convincing-
the poor that they were not meant to be poisoned
under the new Poor Law : he went about eating the
Union bread in public ; and at last he bought an Union
loaf every week, and had it served up at breakfast,
where the family thought it the best bread they got.
The present Earl was one of Melbourne's private secre-
taries, and often re-sealed his letters, which the Minister
had himself sealed so carelessly that they came in two :
he was very careless, left all sorts of secrets about : the
secretary had to sweep up and burn.

Talking of Outram, Capt. E. said that he was brave
to foolhardiness. He was standing with several men
looking from a terrace into a tank full of alligators ;
some one said, ' I wonder whether any one would plunge
in among those brutes ? ' Outram did so at once ; made
such a splash that he frightened them all off. E. told
me that in some parts of India tigers had become so
numerous since the disarming Act, that they were
obliged to give back the arms to the people.

Monday, Aug. 15. I am still trying to remember
what I heard, learnt, or perceived at Hickleton. The
very effort saves me from losing the general impression
of rare and undeserved enjoyment. . .

These two good brothers accompanied Charles and
me in the carriage to Doncaster. . . So my parting was
cushioned softly. The train came late, when we two
were deep in one of the regular talks, and smart young
men armed against the grouse put their heads out of
windows to call ' Charley ' into their carriages ; but he

1864] LORD MELBOURNE. OUTRAM 135

was so g-ood as to stick to the private or extra carriage
which the stationmaster put on for him ; and I enjoyed
his companionship all the way to the Quaker town of
Darlington. . .

I got out at Chfton, imagining I might get country
quarters tolerably near the north end of UUeswater.
So I landed at a neat httle station at 3 p.m., but found
that there was no inn ; even the village was some
way off; nor was there even a man, much less a
fly, to take my goods : so I left them with the lone
stationmaster, wondering whether he ever saw a tourist
before, and marched off vaguely towards Askham. . .
After a hot but pleasant walk over a park (Lowther),
through beautiful woods, along fine fresh uplands, to
which I wished I could have led some of those starving
Yorkshire cows ; through lanes fringed with the most
fairy-like combination of grasses, ferns, and other name-
less plants, I dropt down to Pooley Bridge in time to get
a comfortable meal, a sweet glimpse of the lake, and
a snug coach-drive back to Penrith, which is but three
miles from Clifton : so that I spun out three miles into
seven miles walking and six coaching, and then spent
five shillings on fetching my luggage ; and it was a
thoroughly good job too. . .

My companions inside the coach were not at first appe-
tizing: they were two plain middle-class elderly women. . .
I thought they were Lancashire shop-people, such as I am
used to see in the Lakes ; but presently the first speaker
said, ' Dunmallet will look so beautiful — sheep all up the
slope of the hill.' This sounded like a native ; I began to
think she was introducing her own land to a visitor . . .
their little memories kept budding as they passed house
after house, till we came to Eamont Bridge, when the

136 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

lady with the ringlets remarked emphatically, ' Now we
are in Cumberland ; ' and I knew it was no Lancashire
sightseer, but a true Cumbrian. Then the other spoke
of some garden or grounds, lamenting that the storm
had blown down some trees, but saying that it was
still beautiful, morning, noon, and evening ; then the
other murmured in a homely, tender way, ' I often
imagine it to myself; ' and then I knew she was coming
back brimfull of piety to her home. Good luck to her !

Saturday, Aug. 13. • .1 determined to walk to
Brougham Castle and the Countess's Pillar. Luckily
I had the wit to charter a small boy as a guide to set
me on the way, a plan generally to be recommended,
because the boy does not know too much, can be easily
got rid of, gets a lesson from his employer, and earns
an honest coin. My young Cumbrian was fifteen, but
still at school ; a British school, in a new advanced
class, paying a higher sum than before, qualifying for
apprenticeship. . . ' A boy was drowned close to the
Castle the other day out of a raft, fishing; his father
went to look for him, stood up to his neck in the river,
poked for him with a crooked stick, got hold of him by
the breast and lifted him up, but let him drop ; but Jack
Ousby got him up.' Such was his talk — all to the point :
I tried to be as good a raconteur^ and told him briefly
the story of the Shepherd Lord, the Clifford of Brougham
Castle ; but I found my little friend did not listen.

So I gave him my usual exhortations to read books
and copy extracts into a blank book, and rewarded his
half mile of walk with a fourpenny bit, which faith
persuades me was at once spent on a copybook.

I went alone to the mild Wordsworth's haunts, found
the wS hep herd Lord's keep redolent of cows who had

i:,:.,] CAI'EXOCn. THE SHEPHERD LORD 137

retreated into it from the cruel sun ; they did not
jo^rudofe me the ^reen bank and shade on the west. . .
I trudq^ed alonq- the Appleby road, till I reached the
little minaret, now made useful as a dial and as a notice-
board for X'olunteers, who request me to keep the hi^h
road when ' the red flag is on the butt.' What butt ?
Wordsworth would have written a sonnet on the butt, as
he has on the dole of bread given at the pillar ' for ever '
in memory of the great Countess Anne s mother. As
I knew that the pillar was Jacobean ( — ugly) I think
I did no common homage to poetry in going to see it. . .

Since I have been here (Capenoch) I have been doing
nothing but writing this Journal and VQ2i(X\ng Miser ables,
unless one reckons conversation.

Yesterday Mr. Gladstone ^ drove me to Drumlanrig,
where I should have enjoyed the grounds, but for the
sun and the flies. . . To-day we went— a carriage full —
host and hostess, two young ladies and I, and had
a long day of sun and air, with a fair amount of
interesting country, a few wild flowers, and many sweet
songs in the twilight. What I have kept is a new tune,
' Sir Randal,' a pathetic, simple ballad about a young
Scot who went to the wars of High Germany in 1632,
and found when he came that cousin Jean, who wept for
him when he left her, disowned him on his return. . . It
was a treat to be eight hours in a carriage with three
ladies, all lively and composed and perfectly sensible
and up to fun. We laughed under the tyrant sun ; and
our sympathy with wronged lovers came out, like the
sock, at nightfall. . . Miss Margaret Gladstone and her
mother delighted in telling us the many and undeniable
proofs of the Duchess of Buccleuch's goodness of heart.

^ of Capenoch.

138 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

I am told that T. Carlyle left the county in disgust with
his neighbours because they had only two topics, drilled
turnips and the Duke of Buccleuch. But, in spite of his
great authority, I shall go with the shire. . .

Wednesday^ A ug. 1 7. This is a day to be noted in
this little book with honour and thanks. I have been
well ; actually disembodied ; unmindful of physiological
facts, drawing breath like a bird, and feeding like a
contented cow. I dreamt last night that I was at the
head of a Whig combination ; I composed a jolly song
about the ' good old cause.' I got dukes to come to
dinner and forget themselves. I woke with a sense,
such as I had in my boyhood, of having had a deep,
rosy sleep. I walked five hours on the moors, knee-
deep in heather, and steeped in the finest air, lying
down now and then to rest, or to escape shot, or to see
the cool clouds, with ' Sir Randal ' running in my head
— no fatigue, no heat, no thirst — rimmed in with little
mountains that had all the modulations wanted for the
due rendering of the sunlight.

With my host marched his amiable brother William.
. . . He told us that he knew Gen. Ramsay, aide-de-
camp to the present Emperor of Russia. R. said that
he believed that Nicholas on his deathbed sent for his
son, and said he had wished to set the serfs free but dared
not, and charged him with the duty. He (Mr. Wm.
Oladstone) heard from a Russian ofiicer that he left
Moscow with 2,500 men, and reached Sebastopol with
500. His firm was employed to help a Scotchman in
scUing a steamer at Petersburg: of ^6,500, the pur-
chase-money, £\y^(y:i went in brilx's to the func-
tionaries. . .

This evening, solo singing and solo playing alter-

1864] NICHOLAS I. MAC AULA Y. MUSIC 139

nately — both pure aiul finished — and four people of
one mind, as we were in the carriage, in absorbing- it.
Why should this cx)me to an end ? Why do voices
and fing-ers fail, and minds start asunder ? As poor
old King- Hudson said of the champagne, how much
lost time have I to make up ? how many evenings
have I spent in dulness, when I might have been
in the bowers of music and that womanly courtesy
which lavishes sweet sounds and thanks one, by looks if
not by words, for listening ?

Friday, Aug. 19. I sit down at noon instead of
midnight to talk to my book.

I have been sitting in the library, reading- Macaulay's
account of the wars of the Orangemen, the death of
John Temple, who could not bear dishonour and remorse,
the gathering of the angry Protestants at Kenmare,
' the imperial race standing at bay.' Meanwhile through
the door came the simple, relig-ious, plaintive singing,
* Waste and weary,' ' This is no my ain plaid,' and
other sad sweetnesses that made my nature ache with
those pains that neither angels above us, nor the kind,
affectionate dogs below us can ever feel — ' longings like
despair.' . .

Life without music is despicable, with it inexplicably
strange. Listening to pathetic songs I rebel against the
death of those who sang them in the old times : the
makers of those melodies are my unknown brethren ;
all others who speak in what we call words fail to let me
know them thoroughly ; music is the only communion
of hearts, and it makes one's heart feel hopelessly
empty. . .

Saturday, Aug. 20. We are all vain, more or less ;
but some of us have taste, and some^ pride, to keep down

I40 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

the display of self-complacency. How much good it
would do M. to read high literature, were it only for
the sake of finding something above him, something to
admire. Churchgoing does not ensure this. These
men take preachers, whether Spurgeon, or Monro (of
Harrow Weald), or S. Oxon, or Manning, just as they
take speakers, singers, engineers, and other clever men.
They are, in some sort, all of them ' Peter Bells.'

Sunday, Attg. 21. Yesterday I went up the valley
of the Soar five miles or so . . . then I walked home
by another way and enjoyed my stepping powers, and
welcomed some huge inky clouds which threw a few
drops on my umbrella but had not the heart to spoil
the harv^est. Outside the house I stood chattering and
looking at the throbbing scarlet of the geraniums. . .

I fancy N. has a great deal of lost time to make up
in the way of loving and being loved. A month of
trouble and sorrow would let her soul chip the shell,
and let loose the true woman. . . Is there any training
for women but suffering ? . . .

Went to the Free church. . . Mrs. put me into

the minister's pew. . . I was in difficulties as people
crowded in, and had to take refuge in the seat of a
hospitable layman, who smelt hard of peppermint and
went on obdurately pepperminting all through service.
The music was more tuneful, but the preacher was more
nasal and monotonous than at the Mstablishment. They
had similar instruments of torture, poles with boxes at
the end pushed along the pew-shelves to rake up the
embers of zeal, and even little children dropt coins into
them. I can fancy these poles tipped with burning
brushes and pushed under heretical chins at an auto-
da- Jc. . .

1864] FAREIVELLS AT CAPENOCH 141

I have ^iven the united parents my best advice about
the education of their son John. . . I lon^ to tell the
shrewd, kindly, even-minded mother that she ou<rht to
show more attention to her dau<^hters. Her ' pearl '
wants only to be set in the fine gold of love. Some day
some one will come, and her easy wit will melt into
faltering- tenderness ; and the heart that is now uttered
in severe music will get another mode of utterance.
But meanwhile her mother should drop on her every
day the honey stored in her own great loving- time.

Croquet is a plague : it is better to sit on the moors
and look for pedicularis vulgaris than spend the
walking hours in a little frivolous crowd. To-morrow
I shall have to pack up again ; and I shall be much
more sorry to go away than I was last year or the year
before. I have found something that looks very like
health, and I have overcome a very ancient antipathy
to a certain sex . . . and, speaking roughly, I have
sometimes been very nearly free from self-pity. . .

Tuesday^ A ugusi 23. Mrs. Gladstone brought me two
nectarines. . . I forgot to say that one day, as w^e were
going over the garden, I noticed the absence of lavender,
the only thing which I used to pick at home as a boy in
August, and still pick at Cambridge. She brought me a
little wisp of it at dinner-time, nicely tied up ; and my
handkerchiefs have carried the fragrance of it. . . I wish
people would ever^^-where take up the pretty etiquette
(which I think prevailed in Ireland in 1 844) of presenting
a guest on his departure with a nosegay. It would be
much more pleasing than the sandwiches which one
gets nowadays. . . Nor shall I forget the old lady's
pleasure at discovering that Miss R. was singing Scottish
songs : how" she stood up and put her arm on the

142 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

singer s neck to support her as she stooped over her to
listen. . . She reads Sherlock 07t Death as cheerfully
as young people read a novel. She has overlived the
anguish and the horrors of parting.

How dull I was on the journey, and then wandering
about Glasgow — though I fairly tried to employ my
mind in thinking of the excellence of the Scotch, and
noticed everything : the groups of well-dressed maidens
standing in Thornhill to be hired as servants ; the pro-
cession of carts bringing the Duke's luggage from the
station ; the comeliness of the barefooted children in the
lower part of Glasgow ; the Sabbatical silence of the
respectable streets — where there are side-streetlets, on
a steep slope, so grassy that the Lincolnshire sheep would
be happy if they were sent there on a visit ; the good
taste and patriotism and scriptural purity of the coloured
windows in the Cathedral, each given by some muni-
ficent tradesman or landowner, most of them enriched
with blazonries ; the beautiful monument of Anderson,
who died in the Indian Mutiny war. . . I bought
Enoch Arden^ which I finished that night : the poetry
was not so soothing to my solitude as it should
have been. The two big poems seemed to me less
interesting than novels, less affecting than what
Mrs. Gaskell, less noble than what George Eliot would
have written on the same subjects. . . The most original,
free and striking thing in the book is the sailor boy who
answers the mermaid : nothing can be more pointed or
manly. This could not have been done in prose.

Is not Tennyson now in that stage which Shakespeare
reached when he wrote Measure for Measure ? I
remember Mallam generalizes that as a phase of thought
which all great minds must go through.

:864] ENOCH ARDEN. LES MISJLRABLES 143

Durino- tlii'sc last five days I have finished Les
Miserahlrs. \\\\\ docs Victor Hu(ro bring in that litde
episode of the two lost children and the sv^ans in the
Luxembourcr ? Is it as a little bit of repose in the midst
of the struo-glc ? or is it a l)it of forced consistency, to
show that he is exhibitino- a g-allery of ' miserables ' ?
I lament in him that French blood thirstiness: he kills so
many men at the barricade. Grantaire s death reminds
me of that fine French chivalrous death of the young-
lover in the Fille du Regent. How impossible it would
be for an American to touch so lightly the gay reckless-
ness of Courfeyrac at the barricade ! Gavroche is a true
jewel. Eponine is well conceived, but would have been
worked out in some ways better by an Englishman.
Victor Hugo, like A. Dumas, cannot get on without such
physical horrors as sueur glace (how am I to know
what the gender oi sueur is ?). . .

I finished the book late at night, Aug. 26, melted and
half slain with pity for the human race.

On Wednesday, Aug. 24, I forgot to hate the Pope ;
but I gloried in Scotland, and thought how her happiness
grew out of the immortal stock of ' civil and religious
liberty.' I wandered about Glasgow^ buying a compass
to steer myself if bemisted in Ireland, looking at a
tartan shop of great splendour, with serious thoughts
of inquiring for the Johnson tartan. . . I strolled along
the quay, and saw bales of cotton wasting their fluff
as they rolled into carts, and pigs of iron, and other solid
proofs of the wealth which the Glasw^egians owe to
political wisdom. I saw their smoky-black College,
and their list of prizes offered for essays, with no en\^\
I saw not, nor w^ished to see, their blockade-runners;
but I indulged a spiteful wish for a sudden peace in

144 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

America that would make it a bad speculation to have
built them.

The day was fine, the steamer easy and roomy, the
scenery of the Firth of Clyde was good. I read my French
book, and landed at Greenock and killed time with a
longish walk : I saw two boys quarrelling over a game,
and took comfort in the thought that they could not have
a ' shinning-match,' because they wore no shoes. I bought,
wherever I went, penny or halfpenny papers, partly to
please the little boys who sold them — such serious and
respectable little Gavroches ! partly to have the gratifica-
tion of reading sensible stuff, free from grumbling, free
from superstition. I read on deck till 8.55 p.m., and
then took refuge in sublime twilight broken by heroic
islands, and then in that shelf which this benighted age
persists in considering as equivalent to a bed. . .

KiLLARNEY. — On Friday, Aug. 26, we were off to see
the lakes before 9.0. It was a day of unexampled lustre. . .
I never saw, the others never saw, such reflections. I had
been told by Edward Coleridge to look for a sensation
in the foliage of the arbutus : but it was rather the holly
that struck me ; or perhaps the charm of the lakes is
that the low islets are all crowned with thick foliage.
No rock looks forsaken or wrecked or degraded. No
turf that we saw is swampy or foul. It is scenery in
full dress : every crevice filled with fern, ever^' scraggy
trunk hidden by a neighbour's boughs. . . I missed
birds and falling water. It was August, and a very
dry August. To make up for these defects, the season
gave us the haws, the rowan -berries, the yew-berries —
all red — the holly-berries turning ; alder-masts bright
green (which I had never seen before), hydrangea and
escallonia well out at the ' meeting of the waters ' ;

1864] KILLARNEY. PRAYER-MEETING 145

a little furze, not too much heather, mag-nificent grasses,
lovely water weeds. I thought I should like to go
there in winter and see the hollies enjoying the place
by themselves, with the black lower strata of the rocks
hidden by the rise of the waters.

It was that night, after being saturated with cheerful
beauty, that I read about the self-denial and anguish
of Jean Valjean— -a worthy book for such a day. . .

Sunday^ Aug. 28. — 6.30. We crossed the drive to
the laundry, and climbed up a ladder to an upper
chamber, which had a small table with a white cloth,
sundry chairs, and a few tin sconces.

Mr. Richard Mahony, my host, B.A., aged thirty-six,
read a verse or two of the blessing of Joseph, and
preached without book, dwelling on ' the good will of Him
that dwelt in the bush.' . . He was very forcible without
ranting, very rational though fervent. His words were
w^ell chosen, his manner simple and business-like : he
evidently believed all he said. . . After he had prayed
and a hymn or two had been sung ... he asked the
people to pray for a young woman who had been led
into the right w^ay, and for the Roman Catholic brethren.
We knelt : almost at once was heard the rough, hurried,
clumsy praying of an elderly labouring man. Very
hearty it sounded, and full of scriptural words : people
said Amen just when they liked. . . Then my Brother
prayed — that they might be patient, gentle, and discreet
in teaching others . . . his manner and speech were litur-
gical, yet scriptural : I was astonished at his success, if it is
right to apply such terms as success or failure to praying.

My chief interest here has been watching my Brother
in the enjoyment of his leisure, particularly when fish-
ing ; thirty years ago I used to potter about the Torridge

L

146 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

with him, hoping that he would catch a fish, and grieving
bitterly over his bad luck. Again I did and felt the same
as on the Upper Torridge, under Halsdon and Abbot's
Hill in those few summers that he spent in honour, of
which I was so proud, as a landowner in our own
country ; when the pleasure was enhanced for me by
thinking that the oaks on the bank and the rocks that
jutted out to break the water were all his. Yesterday
I ran to fetch his landing-net, just as if I were a blood-
thirsty boy, and felt a childish pang of disappointment
when I came up puffing and blowing, only to find
that he had been deceived by two little troutlets. . .
Sorrowfully did the zealous fisherman at the end of
all his wettings look into his basket and count up ten
of these little impostors. But he was consoled w^ith
a magnificent stormy sky, blue and lilac gauze dropping
from lurid chaos on to the peaks : I could not see all
this ; but I did see two rainbows drawn on a background
of hard mountain, within rifle-shot of the lake's edge
where we stood.

What I have gained here is a charitable, if not aifec-
tionate, way of thinking about Ireland. . . Solid Irish
history seems to begin with the seventeenth century, and
the more modern it is the better I like it, because there are
more rainbows. As a contrast with Scotland it is a sadly
instructive country ; as a cure for any love for Popery it
is valuable. Hut I suppose men better than I may derive
also from Ireland a new kind of family lovingkindness
and a pure, fresh, joyous spirit of evangelical piety.

Sunday, Sept. 4 {K.C.C.). I have reached my home.
It is bright, though silent ; full of things that remind me
of the past time and of absent human beings. My
College gives me a pleasant welcome. They are really

i864] WATERLOO STORIES 14,1

glad to see me: they h.ivc no trouble in entertaining-
me; I cause them no anxieties; they have not to con-
sider how they will dispose of me after luncheon ; no
horses to order for me. I am at once comforted by
knowing that I give no trouble, and resuming my right
to gruml)le. I found a good friendly servant, and a
courteous letter ; more to the point, I got a good dinner,
the first for some time. At dinner was a sensible and
cultivated General Smith, to whom I was introduced by
his contemporary Mr. Barnard \ a charming representa-
tive of the Regency and the nankins. . . He left the
navy, for which he still retains a preference, and went
into an infantry regiment. When the Waterloo cam-
paign began, the headquarters w^ith three companies
were on their way from the West Indies. The battalion
was made up at home, and was sent up from Brussels
to the field, arriving at 1 1 o'clock — 702 men ; fifteen
officers, of whom seven were wounded. They were
under General Lambert. They remained stationary
till 6 p.m., when Smith was cut over in the leg, and
had to hobble to the rear. He got upon a return
tumbril ; w^as helped up by an officer of the Light
Division, who had an arm in a sling, and was very civil.
They went very slowly through the forest of Soignes ;
the sides of the road were deep mud, pavement in the
middle. A staff-officer rode up and asked the man
with the arm in sling whether he really was so badly
wounded as not to be able to return to duty : he said
he was ; the staff-officer said he was sorry to hear it.
Smith ascertained after they got to Brussels that it was
a sham. I asked him these questions : Did the men
complain of the inefficiency of their muskets ? — No. Did

^ John Barnard, Fellow of King's, died 1885.
L 2

148 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

they see what was going on ? — No. Could you see what
was going on elsewhere, as for instance at Hougoumont ?
— No. We could see ears of corn cut off one after another ;
then we heard the bullet. Did you observe wounded
men lying close to you, whom you could not leave your
ranks to help } — No. Did you receive any supplies of
ammunition } — No. Did any staff-officer come to you ?
— If they did, it was only to the brigadier. Nothing
was said to us about the progress of the battle by any
one. Did you get any food 1 — No. Most of the men
had never been in action before ; unconscious of danger.
I have hastened to put this down for fear I should
forget the precious evidence of an eye (and leg) witness
about Waterloo. Perhaps I may never have another
chance of questioning another man who was there.
How I did hate the idiots who interrupted my catechism
with their platitudes, presuming as they did to tell us
things, things stale as the remainder biscuit, about
frightened recruits and the like. How rare a thing it is
to be able to listen without obtruding one's vile self.

Monday, Sept. 5. Compared two accounts of Joan
of Arc, one a French book, the other in the Pictorial
History of Engla^id. They agreed as far as I could
see. It seems that she had to overcome tough and
coarse unbelief: the leaders did not give in to her claims
except as a means of encouraging the more credulous
followers. Did she do, or did she undergo, any miracle?
The evidence for her supernatural knowledge of the
king's dream and of St. Catherine's sword seems rather
good. vShe seems to have been devout and clever too.
What does Renan think of her ?

. . . W. lent me Froude's last volume ; and I have
been looking at such parts as I had not read before.

1864] IVATERLOO. FROUDE 149

rVoude has all the advantage of not knowing how stale
his matter is ; he writes with a gay, free unconsciousness,
which is enviable. 1 suppose if one plays games till
twenty-one, learning meanwhile to read and write and
chatter, one can begin then to get up a subject for the
press with the advantage of having no preconceived
ideas : Trollope, Kingsley, and perhaps others, write
fluently by virtue of their ignorance.

. . . I w^ent by twilight to see Myrtle, in the
* Quarters,' a field w^here our choristers play cricket.
She fled from me, although I called her ' old lady ' just
as I had scores of times on the banks of the Thames.

Tuesday, Sept. 6. Last night after journal I went
into the little western room, and read a few pages of
Dante's life with a dictionary. . . I got up at 8.0,
read Froude's amusing but irreverent account of the first
English slavedealers, w^ho are described with bold irony
as carrying on their complicated villainies on strictly
Calvinistic principles, trusting in the divine favour for
escape from the dangers into which their wickedness
brought them. So loathsome is the cant of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries that one cannot wonder at
the language of Helvetius (w^hom I read at Capenoch)
and Bentham, which I read this afternoon.

I was writing letters after breakfast when my young
stonecutter, w^ho would be a sculptor, Mr. Henry Wiles,
came in. I paid him ;^50 for his marble representation
of my head, having already paid £\^ for the clay. . .
It may be an extravagance ; but the money has tended
to give him hope, perhaps happiness ; and it is worth
while, even at the cost of L^^^ to make a young man
happy, even for a year.

At 4.30 I dined, w^ell, in Trin. Coll. as the guest of

150 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Sir George Young- ; met my old acquaintance, with whom
I have been at the same point of half- acquaintance lor
many years — Munro ^ a great scholar and honest, simple,
rugged man ; also the good-looking and well-bred
Blore, and Bowen my brother schoolmaster, who travels
through Northern France on a velocipede. . . After
dinner we had a pretty little investigation of Lord
Westbury s Act for the sale of small benefices. In the
country you may hear a man make a fine sweeping
statement and then give one instance ; so you may in
London. At Cambridge, in our best circles, one man
asks whether the Act has had any effect ; another man
says, ' Yes, I know one or two cases ; ' a third man says, ' I
know one case.' Then some one says, ' It is, I suppose,
the only instance in modern times of a gift made by the
State to the Church.' Another doubts, ' Is it a real gain
to the Church ? is it not merely a transference from
public to private patronage ? ' This has to be explained
by another to mean that, although the money derived
from the sale of the advowson is applied not to State
secular objects, but to the augmentation of the income
of the benefice, yet the clergy gain nothing in the
increased chance of preferment, because the benefice is
a piece of private property, whereas it was once a thing
to which any curate might aspire. But w^e conclude
that the State has acted, at all events, in a disinterested
spirit.

All this is said in the (juietest way, without the least
attempt at display of cleverness. . . The refreshing thing
in these conversations is the absence of platitudes.

Wedficsday, Sept. 7. Wiles came with my marble
double . . . and deposited the lump on one of the old
' Rev. II. A. J. Muiiro, Vice- Master of Trinity, Professor of Latin.

1864] CAMBRIDGE TALK 151

Torrini^ton tables : It is flattering in the bumps above
the eyes, but the nose does not seem sharp enough. . .
After dinner took sherry with the amiable Barnard, and
examined him as an old Etonian in the names of people
mentioned by Praed. He says he used, with others, to
ride up the bank on June 4, which Praed describes.
He never looked upon his tutor in loco parentis. It
was Thackeray ; who used to keep P'ourth-Form boys
waiting for sense, then gave them enough for two lines
with no help, and let them waste an evening over the
difficulties, which were such as they could hardly get
their elder brothers to solve when they got back to the
dame s house, e.g. sense for a long verse :

' In every village lives an old woman whose pleasure,' &c.

I have been five hours at a stretch in society, owing to
Brocklebank's ^ return, whom I was truly glad to see : he
is so full of plain, wholesome interest in plain, humdrum
people, such as our tenants, incumbents, and choristers ;
with him I feel that King's College is my parish and
my county, and I b ome a little Buccleuch, and have
a hankering after legal terms and balance-sheets and
coprohtes. . .

At dinner I had two guests. Met Dr. Woodham ', and
was told by the law^ful authority to sit by him, which
was a rare treat. He has a strong stomach, capacious
of beer and wine, a very strong voice, a good, manly,
shrewd face, a flat, fine hand, a great memory, a rare
plainness of speech. . . He is an enthusiastic Latinist,
talks of Horace, Lucan, Catullus with more force and
warmth than anybody I ever met ; a first-rate historian
and archaeologist. Boasts of never having read a play of

^ Rev. Thomas Brocklebank, Fellow and Bursar of King's.

2 H. A.Woodham, LL.D., Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.

152 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Shakespeare, detects inaccuracies in W. Scott, specially
in Ivanhoe^ but not in Ah'gel or Peveril or Woodstock. . .
He and I agreed perfectly about Newman's Apologia^
and his zeal and enthusiasm in speaking of it were
wonderful in a hard Times writer. . . He thought
Macaulay exaggerated, but never turned black into
white or white into black. . . All his talk was gene-
rous and ingenuous, with a healthy consciousness of
power quite different from the vanity of most men ; and
he was a good listener, though we could teach him
nothing: no one is afraid of him. If I had been
properly educated, I might have been a little more like
this well-informed man : I am sure I did not lack the
wish to be well-informed, and my head might have
hardened by mathematics. But in default of that, let
me try to be at least enlightened, free from superstition,
free from silliness, free from bitterness.

But it is hard to have to live without the help of men
that could teach me something. . .

Sept. 9. Received at breakfast three amiable young
scholars, one of whom was my friendly and gentle
visitor when I was pleuritic nearly two years ago, and
whom I consider from almost a domestic point of view
ever since. What nice, well-regulated minds they
have ! how devoid of improper tenets or tendencies !
how fit for appointments and responsibilities! They are
utterly unlike what I was and most of my friends were
at that age. We were in a ferment of conflicting opinions,
tying knots in our minds, wondering zvhcn the world
was coming over to us, expecting to see Jericho fall
before the trumpets of Carlylc and Ja7ie Kyre. These
young men are as prudent as Joynes and as polished as
the Public Orator. vSuch are the results of a sound

1864] CAMBRIDGE TALK 153

(Irillino- in ihc luiinanlties and algebra ; and I do not
envy, but admire. . .

Hrocklcbank and I sauntered into our garden, pon-
dering the worn-out roller, lamenting the scanty crop
of lavender, condoling with the gardener on the failure
of roses ; thence to the Hotanic Garden, where we
saw little boys feeding the University ducks ... in our
desperately dull pleasure-ground.

We sat together, like old fogies after dinner, reading
papers like those haunters of clubs with whom we must,
if we live, soon be numbered, till 8.0, when he went to his
inventory of all the College farms at Sampford Courtenay,
the Devonshire parish which my father used to think
would perhaps be my benefice if I went to King s. . .

Sitnday, Sept, 1 1 . After service I skimmed Pil-
griin's Progress. Thought it wretched stuff ; wondered
Macaulay could praise it so highly.

1 .0. Bradshaw ^ came ; we purred over books.

1.45. We walked in the garden, and picked a per-
centage of the few surviving flowers ; then in the Grant-
chester meadows, talking over all the young people of
the College like two maiden aunts. . .

4.0. Dined as Brandreth's ^ guest in Trin. Coll.
hall. . . Having stored ourselves with fresh air we went
to Clark's ^ room in Neville s Court. . . My little vanity
was gratified by Woodham's getting me to sit near him,
and talking archaeology, and inviting me to dine with
him and explore all the details of his college. He and
Clark and Stephen and I had a rational talk about
American affairs. . .

^ Henry Bradshaw, University Librarian.
^ Rev. Henry Brandreth, Fellow of Trinity.
'' Rev. W. G. Clark, Public Orator.

154 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Cambridge is the place where men, holding per-
haps strong opinions, can coolly compare notes, and
help each other to understand a question without
arguing. . .

I asked Clark about Tennyson. He was very slow
in writing Aylvter's Field. He told C. of a poem in
Matcd^ ' Dead, long dead ' — that he wrote it off suddenly
in ten minutes ; and on hearing a word of surprise said,
' Well, it was less than twenty ; ask my wife.' . . He once
asked some one else in company what he thought of
Alexander Smith. Venables observed, ' I don't think you
need be alarmed, Tennyson.' * Alarmed ! what do you
mean ? ' . . .

Woe 's me, that I must live where no such men
dwell ; where, over wine or tea, I hear nothing of
Mexican architecture, of Wisconsin earth -sculpture, of
Stonehenge, of Dutch houses at Lynn, ot Norman and
Edwardian castles, of Greek music and dancing. So
narrow and jejune is the social talk that I have been fed
upon that I only wonder that I am not more frightened
in the sense of my ignorance than I have been to-day.

Monday, Sept. 12. I kept my engagement with
Brock, the bursar. We went over the statistics of our
College patronage, considering what advowsons ought
to be sold, what curacies augmented with the proceeds :
the scheme seems likely to be accepted. . .

Received to-day a very good, thoughtful letter from my
employer^ who has changed her name since she wrote
it, the mother of the beloved Archie and Iwerard, of
whom I was glad to be reminded. If they were only as
fond of knowledge as Cambridge men ! Why care for
knowledge ? . . .

' The Duchess of Cleveland.

864] TENNYSON. ARTHUR CAYLEY 155

Sepf. 13. Armine Willis, writer on foreign politics
in the I)idc.\\ and law student, once my pupil, came to
breakfast Aviih his brother Reginald. . . We talked about
privateerinof, China pirates, and such juicy topics. . . We
did something-^ I trust, to kindle in the robust Reginald
an adventurous and aggrandizing spirit, so that he may
be a tamer of barbarians and a destroyer of junks
rather than one of our lazy college fellows. . .

Arthur Cayley \ one of our professors of mathematics,
has been known to lose himself in long investigations
of symbols so as to forget to eat for days together and
g-o near his death. But the mathematician threads his
labyrinth alone ; no wife nor daughter can even imagine
what he is seeking- for : when he has done he must, if he
wishes to communicate with others, either be content
with printing a treatise for a score of readers dispersed
over Europe or set before his hearers in a lecture-room
the mere rudiments of his knowledge. The musician
can carry with him a thousand happy hearers. Amongst
men who is more enviable ? . . .

After dinner we sat together, talking- now and then,
reading lives of old Cambridge men, such as Darell the
exorcist, and Killigrew the diplomatist, and talking
about them ; or talking over our old pottering tours in
France. . . Chelsea pensioners perhaps talk in this
way. It is a merciful arrangement that the sense of
triteness and staleness diminishes as we get older. . .
Shall I begin another Journal-book to-morrow ? I close
this in fair health, with my best wishes for all lovers of
liberty.

Sept. 13, 1864.

' Arthur Cayley, F.R.S., Sadleirian Professor of Mathematics, Cam-
bridge.

156 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept. 1864

To Rev. C. W. Furse.

K. C. C, Sept. 17, 1864.

At the next College meeting I shall again bring forward
the opening of the College ; and we begin to see our
w^ay to it. I fancy some few people would wish me to
be tutor here ; but it is ver)^ doubtful whether I could be
of much, if any, use, or at least of as much use as I can
be in school (I say nothing about pupil-room).

It is a great satisfaction to feel at Cambridge that our
young people, and mine in particular, do us credit
and cause me, as an Eton usher, to be sufficiently re-
spected. . .

The passage about Epaphroditus is the gferm of all
the exceedingly interesting flowers of sick-bed kindness.
There is nothing like it in Pagan literature ; though
there are very kind letters of Cicero's and Seneca's
about their sick servants.

To A. H. Drumnwnd.

Eton, Sept. 23, 1864.
I do not pity you for going away — it is your pro-
fession. Glory waits you. The best thing but one in
the Enoch Arderi volume is the poem called ' The Sailor
Roy,' which is quite to the point. Read also the beautiful
poem about Achilles at the end of Horace's Epodes —
Hdrrtda icinpestas \ the lines about Achilles. You can
construe them : he chose a short life and glory. Learn
by heart the famous stanza of Walter Scott's —

Blow, blow the clarion — fill the fife,

To all the sensual world proclaim
One glorious hour of crowded life

Is worth an age without a name !

* Epod. xiii.

Jan. i865] REFORM AT KING'S 157

7^0 Lord Rosebery.

K. C. C, Jan. to, 1865.

I quite conceive and almost feel myself what you must
feel at leavin<r your friends at Easter, and g-ivin^ up
the delightful summer at Eton ; the last summer, which
is often so full of interest as to blot out the memory
of all earlier years. It is a loss which ladies cannot be
expected to understand, and not many men of fifty can
estimate aright — perhaps no one who has not been at
Eton. I never spent such a summer myself, but I have
watched many boys in their enjoyment of it, and caught
the glow and lustre by reflection. Nor would I preach
to the effect that similar and greater enjoyment and
companionship will be found at Oxford, or elsewhere.
Even if it wxre so, human life is not so long or well
arranged as to spare one such summer. It is the pearl
in the crown of years. I can half weep to think that
I shall never again see a Pelham or a Holland stepping
through those weeks of kindness and brotherly sympathy.
May there be many generations of such happy cricketers,
though I be out of earshot. . .

No one on coming to Eton can imagine what is in
store for him if he becomes a genuine Eton playmate.
But a parent can in some measure calculate it, and keep
it before a boy as a great reward of virtuous living, that
he should spend the last year and make the most of it.

I was talking yesterday to a lady, clever and brilliant,
whom I have known since she was a very young girl.
She told me she had sent her boy to Eton because she
could feel sure there must be in so large a school many
really kind hearts ; and as he had a good heart she was
sure he would find them out some day. . . He w^ill go

158 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [J

AN.

Straight into the Army with the soul not chilled, with
generous ferv^our enough to melt all the vapours of his
own natural shyness and other people's stupidity. That
is the true way of estimating a great school.

Eton is not a mere place of residence for people
working avowedly for an examination ; a place which
one is to leave as soon as one ceases to acquire fresh
knowledge. It is a place which contains its own remedies
for idleness, if people will only apply them ; a place in
which there is charity as well as selfish prudence, that
goes on hoping, and looks to a distant point.

No tutor single-handed, and particularly in the upper
part of the school, where tutors and pupils do so little
together, can contend against idleness. He can speak
plainly if he is beaten in the endeavour to get something
done, and then he can try again.

To the Hon. F. L, Wood^.

Staines, Jan. 18, 1865.

I have arranged provisionally about rooms. The plan
is to take the rooms opposite my own, in addition, so
as to keep what I have as pleasure rooms, and use the
big one of the other set for lectures and writing-work ;
the study of the other set as an office for bills, &c. ; and
then I shoukl have a spare bed. It is very expensive
having visitors at Cambridge ; but I shall be able to
afford it now and then. The sad difficuhy is to know
what to do with the vacations. I should like to loaf
about Eton in June and July ; but it would be thought
eccentric and wrong. Want of work is what I really
dread : the sentimental sorrow of leaving the boys and

' About this time the tutorship of his College was olVcred to Mr. Johnson,
and he had arranged to accept it, but the plan was not carried out.

if65] ADVICE TO A FRESHMAN 159

the sweet places clear to memory is not more than I am
!)Ound to Liet over : but when I remember the sorrow of
that autumn when 1 was ill, I feel foolish about it.

We will go to St. George's, if I am not in desk ; we
will have a ride. I wish you joy of the woodcocks.
Yesterday we feasted on oodcocks from the beloved
Halsdon.

To Sir F. Pollock.

March 9, 1865.

. . . Now you have had enough of the frivolous
Cambridge work, the mere philology, please to throw
away the nuts and marry the bride Philosophy. Go to
the best professors — don't be afraid of distraction : go
to Birkbeck and Liveing, WiUis, Stokes — not to Kingsley
or Grote.

Read mathematics as a philosopher, not as one laying
traps to catch marks. You are just at the right age for
that more difficuk study. Hereafter you will come back
to the old literature with a totally new conception. What
can you want of Latin and Greek for the College
Scholarship ? You cannot forget by that time what you
know now. Don't spend another farthing on classical
coaching. . .

I am very glad that your success coincides with
election into the Society^ of which I was a very un-
worthy member.

The Society will do you no good if you pick up in
it only or chiefly the banter or irony. It will do you
good if it makes you hammer out your own thoughts
till they are intelligible and till they fit into other men's
thoughts. The use of the debates or talks is to lay
minds fairly alongside of each other.

1 The ' Apostles'.'

i6o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

Journal. Clovelly, April ii, 1865. — If I had been
trying- to escape from creditors I could hardly have
washed out my trail better than by coming- here.

Had it not been for an absurd illness I should now
be in France, boring a young- companion. Luckily for
him ... I released him from his enofaQ^ement ; and after
paying- me a comforting- visit at the club ... he went
to his sweet home yesterday. I stayed, finished my
letters, heard some music, made up my mind (what
an awkward -looking- parcel it is after it is made up !) ;
left my hotel at ten this morning-, and booked for
Bideford. . .

Nothing to be seen all the way but Salisbury spire,
till the sun sparkled on the Exe, and then on the well-
known weir, and then up the narrowing Creedy fringed
with bright-leaved sallows. Over the Crediton water-
shed ; on the other side larches young and gay, but
never a daffodil all down the Taw, nor could I see an
angler. But I heard happy railway-men noticing to
each other ' how that rose tree had come on these last
three days.' The plantations at Eggesford looked as
hopelessly young as ever ; but one of the stations,
Morchard Road I think, was come of age in a handsome
dress of creepers.

But the water — what a colour it had compared with
the cowardly streams I had passed in Surrey and Hamp-
shire ! At the worst of times I adored the Devonshire
streams ; and now they are at once my smiles and my
tears. Surely to wet one's feet in them must be different
from any other wetting : if I were a fisherman I should
have an excuse for it.

There were serene ships, all sail, trying to move in the
Torriclge Estuary — the view which my fithcr used to

1865] VISIT TO CLOVELLY 161

praise so steadily, and I could not, for want of eyes,
admire ; now I have glass upon glass, and something
within that cjuickcns the optic nerve.

I got outside the bus, and the driver made friends with
me, bent on the job of taking me on to Clovelly. . .
I noticed the old bridge \ abominably modernized for
widening ; the old street as steep as ever. Why those
horses did not jib when pulled up to wait for a deadlock
of market carts I can't imagine.

Whilst my gig was harnessing I pottered round the
remnants of the market. Nothing to buy ; thrifty towns-
women were coming to get the pots of heath and
cineraria cheap, but all was dull.

Just outside the town we passed at a fair trot two
neady-dressed women : one said in a clear, quick way,
* Oh, I wish you'd take this little maid ! ' So I made the
driver stop, and she lifted up the little maid, w^ho w^as at
once seated on my hatbox, holding on to me and a strap,
very demure, not a bit frightened — probably four years
old : Elizabeth Mallet, to be set down at Fairy Cross —
capable of no conversation beyond monosyllables ; had
seen no daffodils, but had seen (when the amendment
was put) ' daffydowndillies ' ; would not be persuaded to
smile a bit ; was going to Bideford again next Tuesday ;
would have been much more interesting if it had cried :
in fact, if it had not been felicitously called a ' maid '
instead of a ' gurl ' would have been hardly worth picking
up. But Fairy Cross was a dear old sound, associated
with long drives from Torrington and the eating of home
food on the rocks of Clovelly, on days when the summer
sun was pleasanter than it can be now. . .

The primroses on the roadside, in some cases ranging

^ At Bideford.
M

i62 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

up a slope as high as a small redoubt, were the only-
pleasant familiar things I saw on the way — for I cannot
like the twisted tree-tops.

It was almost dark when we had to stop the gig at
the head of the street. A boy was got to stand by the
mare ; the driver shouldered my portmanteau, and we
went down the Genoese street carefully. When I had
paid, and wanted to go to my bedroom, I was taken up
the street again — but only to the next door, where lives
the widow of ' Captain Marshall,' who appeared in
ghostly white. . .

Soon deep in a book. Heard a young man's voice :
* Holds his book between his eyes and the candle —
wonder he can see at all.' Fallacy of observation. Read
on, listening for further contributions to self-knowledge,
but gave up the low pursuit on getting nothing better
out of his impudence than ' He's like a man that used to
live at Tunbridge Wells.'

Now, if he had said I looked ill, or interesting, or like
a sketching gent, or like a commercial traveller, or
ugly, or a muff, or the like, it would have been worth
while to have the terrace converted, on this exquisitely
summerish evening, into a drawing-room : but to be
told that one was like some man that once lived at
Tunbridge Wells was a little too pointless. . .

I^nough of the youth : sadly ignorant of the sound-
conducting powers of wood and glass.

At 1 1 a.m. I was ready for my walk, committed to
a ' maid' called Marianne, aged perhaps ten, who began
her professional career last summer. . . The wind was
refreshing, the sun not too hot ; there were no flies.
I thought tlie maid ought to have seen a butterfly.
There were the old scentless violets, and once she

1865] VISIT ro CLOVELLY 163

stooped to :i wild hyacinth, but nowhere did the ' bhie
heavens break from underground ' as at Halsdon. She
owned no daffotHls ; but when she was g-one I found
a lone one, and then a group, on little graves.

I heard laughter of woodpeckers ; and as we sat in
the ledcre of the rock at the Wilderness (we used to call
it, I think, the Hermitage) a bird flew out within a yard
or so of my face, and I half thought it was a swift ; but
the maid was munching a bun w^hich I had bought at
vSahsbury, and could not tell me whether it w-as a swift
or not.

When set fairly in the way for the beach I let her go
home. So down to the well-remembered rocks, which
stand like small pyramids with nearly whole shelves left
out to let the light through — and the comfortable flat
pieces resting on the long- ribbed reefs, where we bathed,
my brother and I, the last time we came. . .

Then I picked out a resting-place w^here I could hear
not only the waves but the millstream tripping dov/n
to its salting-place ; and besides this bass and treble
water there was, unless I am sadly deceived, for a short
time the cooing of a w^oodplgeon. My jumelles box
made a pillow, and I tied on my hat and let it dowm,
and held up my umbrella for shade, and fell into kef^
being incapable of sustained thought ; ultimately wrote
a triplet ^ on my shirt-cuff and packed up.

Following the millstream and liking its hurrying from
its pool through its wooden trough, and further up its
playing under steep banks, hearing once the plaintive
cry of the gulls going perhaps inland as far asTorrington
or Halsdon, stopping to look at a few deer, or to pat
the white limbs of a holly as if it were a live thing, or to

' Cf. loiiica, II. ' Clovelly Beach,' April, 1865.
M 2

i64 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

see what self-sown things were shooting out of a bank,
I slowly crept up a valley which even in leaflessness is
very pretty. So curv^ing leftwards to the church, and
back by the road that brought me last night, I was in
by 2.30 p.m.

April 13, II a.m. Stood at the inn door silently for
some time, hoping to be accosted, that I might order
dinner : no one came. Walked till 2.30 in the Hobby,
the long, winding carriage-road through which we
always came to Clovelly in old times. How well I re-
member my father sending for the keys at the end of
the drive when we came to the top of the street, taking
out the horses, and unpacking luncheon, to be carried
to Mouth Mill ! It makes me groan as if I were in
purgatory : other people may smile over old grief, but
I can only ache.

I went on with my triplets, and stopt every now and
then to write them down, close to ' twinkling star ' not
in flower, or a Danae-bcd of furze-blossom, or a bank of
periwinkles, or a tangle of moss and countless little green
things ; listening to indisputable woodpigeons, gulls
and lambs, and sailors heaving together.

But there was no sun ; there was a dull haze over sea
and woodland ; no wind.

After dinner another walk, some way on the Hartland
Road. I watched some sociable lambs who stood above
me on a hedge — I like their white legs. Then some
cows chewing the cud as they stood ... I like the
movement of their forelegs as well as any animal
movement. . .

Wrote three letters to keep off the sensation of cold,
and began Rortiola again.

* Enmii brings about inevitable degradation of the

1865] CLOVELLY CHURCH 165

mind,' says l^rodio in his dry, wise, modest autobio-
graphy. But why does one feel it, with books of a high
order to read, and friends to write to, and other literary
occupations ? l^ecause one is not well. It can't be
helped. . .

New Inn, I^idrford, April 14 — which is really the
old inn. Why do short-sighted mortals call things
' new } . . ,

[Clovelly.] After breakfast I put on respectabilities
and walked slowly to church — a little late — made one
of those inevitable noises one always makes in lifting
a mediaeval latch, just as they were beginning to confess.
I dare say the squire's wife, a pyramid of silk, thought
my offence worse than any she was herself confessing.
I wished to be late : it is the only comfortable thing in
a strange church ; you are put into an empty place with
a reasonable hope of not finding that you have intruded.
I took the place assigned me at the end of a bench
as broad as a short Ovid. . . Well into the Proper
Psalms. . . I felt a feeble nudge : it w^as a w^ithered
farmer, with odorous corduroys: after all, I had in-
truded. He had come in, wretch, by the north door,
and made no noise : he had no prayer-book, luckily
no hymn-book : if there is a friendly attention I hate it
is being fastened on like a Siamese twin to a hymn-
book, where I can see for a long time nothing but
a strange thumb-nail, the owner of which can never be
brought to understand my peculiar way of reading under
my glasses — thinks I am at the wrong page, guides
me like a child, obliges me to murmur and bow. . .
Helena and Hermia could not have worked at the same
sampler if one had been near-sighted.

Wanted to stop to look at monuments; but the

i66 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

chancel was blocked with living relatives of the people
honoured on the walls. The church has a good-sized
chancel flush with the nave, without a chancel arch.
Stalls in chancel for silken pyramids, too narrow to let
them face about at the Creed — reminded me of Provost
Hodgson, stuck, gasping, in the temporary wooden
Chapel. Parson made no pretence of unction ; quite
respectable — is, I am told, an ardent follower of Mark
Rolle across country. I made sure he was a Devonshire
man by his saying * reel ' for ' real.'

Plenty of gay dresses and pleasant chatter in the
roads back from church. I got away to the Hobby ;
the sun came out, but not with strength enough to throw
a shadow. There was the same brig laden with Welsh
coal, waiting for a breeze to go westwards ; sure to be
wrecked if a gale came from the North. The owner,
a Clovelly man, perhaps enjoying the delay. . .

The people still say by way of affirmation, * Iss, fay.'
They are a washed-out lot, but they laugh : people who
laugh are not beyond one's sympathies. I can't laugh :
getting as grave as a Yank. . .

TORRINGTON, April 1 5. — I am like the Proper Psalms :
no joint is whole ; my flesh withers : I am like a pot-
sherd. Yet this morning I was tolerably well. . .

At I p.m., I took wheels and rattled up the Torridge
valley, asking questions like Perkins's steam-gun. There
was blackthorn in full bloom : and a leash of butterflies
hunting together, afraid to part company. . .

Wilton House, Salisbury, Au^q;. 4, i p.m.— We
walked up town, my little friend and I. He had
just ceased to be an Kton boy. We ordered luncheon
at Layton's and strolled on the terrace, admiring the
red berries of the mountain ash and the blue of the

1865] TORRINGrON. VVJLTON HOUSE 167

distance. Our ' carria^q-e ' (It sounds ^rand) called for
us at the shop, and we be^jan a delightful drive throu.ci^h
the freshest of fresh air, all alongr the road to Ascot,
over the heath, throuirh the ups and downs of Swinley
Wood, past the red deer that will be hunted next
autumn, on to the highlands from which you see (but
I don't see) Wellington College and Sandhurst, and
then to Sandhurst itself, which he saw with a nervous
curiosity, knowing that he is to go there a year
hence, knowing also that he will be pulled back, when
he enters, to the low position of a freshman, liable
to insult and personal violence, and that there will be
none of the Eton luxuries and refinements there. We
waited at Farnborough for the train, and walked about
in pleasant places, making the most of the running
sands. I have been able to make him happier for a
year or so, and he sticks to me, and promises to come
and visit me at Cambridge and at Eton : he told me
more, perhaps, than he would tell my Journal, about his
friends left behind at school, about his troubles, fears,
and misgivings— but all in a calm, contemplative spirit,
with no touch of sentimentalism. . .

Amongst his fixed ideas is the persuasion that he will
never marry ; and though bent upon going into the
army he is very certain that he will be afraid to face
death in battle : these pretty sentiments I believe may
go into the Journal, as they are freely broached every-
where. . .

I was taken round the cloisters — that is to say,
the sculpture gallery — to see how the moonlight im-
proved Wyatt s despised Gothic architecture. But the
moon preferred, I thought, the glorious cedars, coeval
with the blessed Hanoverian dynasty^ which stand over

i68 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

against my lattice where I sleep in No. 7, Bachelor s
Row.

I like being" in this famous palace, as I am honestly
earning my luxuries, not by parasitical bows and scrapes,
but by plain useful Greek grammar to be served up
to the boy ^ three hours a day. He is a nice, teachable
child: but it is I that go to school when I come to
a big mansion. Odd and out of keeping seem the
luxuries with the prayers. My sister's little frugal
meals and short prayers, with her two mald-serv^ants,
are more like primitive gospel. But the wealth here is
flowing freely over the estates. Wilton House is more
defensible than King's College, Cambridge.

My boys are scattered : I hope each is making some
sister or mother happy. I wish I had a mother to make
happy ; I wish I had made my mother happy when
I had one. The boys are much better than I was.

Aug. 5. The house (Lady Herbert said) Is full of
interest : above us is Wolsey's room ; we have a letter,
never printed, from Lady Pembroke to her son, telling
him to bring James I from Salisbur)^ to see As You
Like Ii\ 'we have the man Shakespeare with us.'
vShe wanted to cajole the king in Raleigh's behalf —
he came.

AiLg. 6. At 5 p.m. I walked in the grounds alone ;
stepped out the circumference of the ilex at the south-
west corner of the house — eighty paces of shadow. . .
I think I should get tired of the Hat valley, where the
magnificent timber hides the hill, and there is no sky,
very little air, no sense of infinity.

Aug. 8. There are many days, weeks and months, in
which 1 feel like a fungus in a retired part of a kitchen-

* The late Lord Pembroke.

1865] HILTON. BEMERTON 169

garden — forjrotten, left out, useless. Then comes a
torrent of notices more or less indicative of re^e["ard or
consideration, and I am lifted into the honours of
a conspicuous dandelion. At noon A. called at our
schoolroom and marched me off, by appointment, to
Bemerton. The new church is all very well, though
the tower is too dumpy. But the old church, George
Herbert's church, is almost destroyed. There are a
few ribs of the roof, stumps of windows, a floor heaped
with rubbish. They may call it ' restoration ' if they
like.

At the parsonage the wife showed us the trees which
Dyce drew for the picture of Herbert meditating : one
is a medlar which the good man planted close to the
pleasant little river — its trunk was coated with lead.
It struck me that George Herbert must have led an
easy life parochially ; the church would hold about fifty
people.

At luncheon appeared Edward Hamilton ^, my pupil,
with a note from his mother asking me to dinner, so that
the dandelion became a dahlia. . .

A tig. II. In my walk to-day I saw several children
kindly treated. There was a girl of eight or nine
marshalling four children of four or five, who were to
march in single file holding skirts silently : she drilled
them cheerfully, saying, ' That's better ' very nicely : she
seemed to call it ' threading the needle,' and I fondly
persuade myself that she was training them for a school
feast.

I saw a blue man, middle-aged, possibly a butcher,
taking leave of two children sent on an expedition, one
in a go-cart, the other in charge : to the one in charge

' Sir Edw. W. Hamilton, K.C.B., son of the Bishop of Salisbury.

170 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

he gave a copper, and told her at least five times in
the same tone of voice to ' give her a cake.' Now this
is the first time I ever knew a man of the hard-handed
class spend a copper on a cake for a child. I saw
a go-cart stopping for a flock of sheep (the sheep, of
which there were many flocks, were truly enjoyable, as
they kicked up no dust, owing to the rain, and their
valuable feet made pretty rakings and harrowings over
the dark soft roads), and when they were past the girl
in charge stooped to ask the incumbent whether it liked
seeing the sheep — asked that simple question affec-
tionately— for my benefit more than the child's. The
children can never guess how much good they do to
stray bachelors. Incomparable is the charm of a little
rustic girl, like the one in the old vignette in Scott's
novel who says, ' What's yer wull 1 ' — when she answers
my question about the farm, ^ who lives there ? ' with
straight, unwavering grey eyes and a firm, undaunted
face. I heard singing in a cottage ; I heard a little girl
humming ' Annie Lyle ' to a go-cart. . .

Aii^. 13. Count Strzelecki says that when the Duke
of Wellington went down in his carriage to Parliament
and was hooted all the way as a Tory and Anti-
Reformer, A lava, who sat by his side, put his head
out of the window, clapping his hand to his heart, and
crying out, ' I also am a Tory — I am an Anti- Reformer,
and I glorify m^'sclf for it ! ' whereat they cheered.
P. S. Did they cheer ? Not sure. . .

Yesterday I made another little attempt to impress
my young Prince t\'Ith the duty of hardening his head,
overcoming difficulties. We went over in the micklle
of lessons to see the foxhounds, which came to pay /iwt
a visit. I loved the dogs, as I always do — their wistful

1865] COUNT STRZELECKI 171

faces and quiet fawning-s; they were much milder and
more pictures(iue in couching- than the last pack
I saw. . .

They talked about the custom of sitting* to drink
wine after dinner, peculiar to Kng-lishmen. The Count
made me laugh with his account of Lord Malmesbury
entertaining- foreigners, and, as it is his habit to think
aloud, saying- to himself, ' Shall we g-o out all together
or not?' Mrs. Disraeli was sitting next him, and,
thinking- he meant the Tory Ministry, exclaimed, clasp-
ing her hands (at least the Count clasped his), ' Oh
dear, I trust to God, not ! ' . . .

Aug. 15. After seeing [Bishopston] church I went
along a narrow deep-hedged winding lane, and came to
a magnificent walnut tree, the finest by far I ever saw ;
and opposite a nice-looking small old-fashioned house,
at the gate of which were eight children, waiting about
with no apparent object: presently I heard a rough,
loud man's voice. I thought he was driving them off,
but he was counting them : he was in shirt-sleeves, but
had a well-dressed companion. They leant over the
gate, the rough man called the children, and in his rude
way, disguising kindness (ever since the fashioning of
this eccentric island-people kindness has been a thing
worn under a cloak), he distributed his plums, sending
one to the brat in the ' cradle ' (perambulating): he would
not help me about my road till he had finished the dole.
I had half a mind to stop and talk to him — indeed
I began about the walnut-tree, and am indebted to him
for knowing it is a walnut — but shyness, the plague of
this eccentric English nation, broke off our budding
acquaintance ; and I had to betake myself once more to
the company of the dumb downs, where there are no

172 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

birds, but some musical sheep-bells here and there, and
a briUiant sprinkling of harebells. . .

On the way back I had a little friendly talk with
a lonely shepherd about his dog and sheep. I once
read in a guide-book that Wiltshire was famous for the
acidity of the ale and the mildness of the peasants'
manners, and I certainly verify the second statement in
all my walks: they are a well-spoken race compared
to Devonshire, Bucks, or the North, but not to be com-
pared to Cornishmen. . .

Strzelecki at dinner talked of Palmerston : ' He began
to improve at seventy-five, he is still improving ; if the
Danish question had arisen five years ago, he would have
mounted the British Lion and sung '' Rule Britannia." '
Whereon Count Thun said : ' I am curious to know
when he will be in the full possession of his faculties.'

Last year prizes to volunteers were given here in the
presence of the whole county : the swells assembled in
the Vandyke Room — an estrade had been put up at the
window to make speeches from ; when everybody else
walked round to get upon it, Palmerston with one hand
vaulted over the bar to save time : he ' becivilized ' the
whole county. . .

Sam Oxon lowered my opinion of the clergy by
coming up to his brother bishop ', who was showing the
plans for the mending of the spire, and saying, * Let me
have a squint at them,' which was the only utterance of
His Ubiquity that I caught or cared to catch. If the
clergy wish us to respect them, let them be plain,
grave, and perfectly gentle, without a pennyweight
of affected bienseance^ without a grain of any kind
of slang.

* Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury.

1865] PALMERSTON. SIR JOHN HERSCHEL 173

Auc^. 17. The Count bcg^an ... to talk to me in
a very interestinc;- way about the Atlantic cable. He
said that the mai^-netic storm had acted on it, and on
other lines running- 'on the parallel,' but left untouched
the wires that ran on the meridian. vSir John Herschel
two days ag^o talked with him about it, saying- it could
not be a mere coincidence that a change about the same
time took place in the spots on the sun that there was
zodiacal light and Aurora Horealis visible. The Count
lamented that as Herschel and Faraday were failing,
there was no one capable of generalizing from a very high
scientific point of view and making out a theory to
account for such phenomena. Tyndall, he said, is coming"
on ; but the other men are men with their specialities,
not so comprehensive as Herschel or Faraday.

It is pathetic in the highest degree to hear an
old man thus deploring the decline of his old friends,
when it is their rare intellect that he wishes to keep
alive for the discovery of truth. They die, and we do
not replace them : and yet the mass of knowledge
grows little by little, and the wonderful human race
lives on.

Mais la inori — cest 7me betise. . .

She is not so pretty now as M., who looks very
angelic when singing the hymns in the Chapel. They
are in the deep romance of early friendship, in the bower
of ' maiden thought ' : may their days be as the rippling
of the waves, and when they sleep may they dream of
one another ! . . .

Ati£: 18. It is a feast of still waters and running
waters — formal trees and free luxuriant trees — arti-
ficial gardens and natural woodland — classical bridges,

174 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

Renaissance porches, ferns, deer, ducks, cows, gold,
velvet, licxe. . .

Two or three honey-drops of humanity — worth more
than all the planes and cedars : but the cedars, which
have survived so many stately Pembrokes, pierce my
heart and cannot be forgotten.

Aug. 19. The EarP was under-secretary to Castle-
reagh when he died : hated Canning like other friends
of Castlereagh : determined to go abroad for a time.
Canning took the office, and at once asked the perma-
nent under-secretary Planta, ' What does Clanwilliam
wish for ? ' meaning to make him, as Castlereagh 's eieve,
his first care. He sent a note asking him to meet him,
not at the Foreign Office, but at Apsley House, though
he was no friend of the Duke s. The Earl went there
and waited for Canning, who, when he came in, ' took
him by the buttonhole ' and drew him to the window ;
but before he could say anything, burst into tears, and
then spoke in a very kind, friendly, delicate way, treating
him as the only man to whom he could be, for his old
adversary's sake, kind.

[Capenoch.] a teg. 26. I came here on Friday for
the fourth time, I believe, if not the fifth. I remember
the journey, running through the grassland, the great
hnuting-grounds, noticing the red sandstone and the
descent into Lancashire, and the river under Lancaster,
and then the rise again to the wild country behind
Ulleswater: then Carlisle swarming with \'olunteers,
whom Wahcr Scott would have smiled upon, and the
evening lights on Burns' country, and the recognition
of sweet Nithisdalc. . .

I wrote seven sheets of letters, and read a book of

' Lord Clanwilliam.

1865] CAPENOCIL TRAVAILLEURS DE LA MER 175

systematic lulucatlon (1S15), includinir some account
of mensuration and fluxions, and pined and fretted at
not havinqr been taui^ht : also (Srove's grand address
to the British Association, in which was an account
of the analysis by spectroscope of a vanishing star —
hydrogen burnt with some unknown, probably solid,
body. . .

I think young ladies must be improved since I was
young. Or was it that I was unlucky } I can now
reckon up some eight or nine that I have liked. 1 am
afraid they will play horrible games in the Library every
night, and I shall get no Mozart.

Tuesday, Aug. 28. I declare the beauty of Nithisdale
is wonderful . . . thoroughly enjoyed our drive yester-
day to Morton Castle. Though near Drumlanrig it
looks as if it were in a wilderness, moated as it is on
three sides by a broad bit of water, on the banks
whereof are scattered trees and smooth turf sloping up
to a stern, purple range of moors. We saw Criffel far
away : the girl was vexed at being told that the English
hills were in sight, or ought to be. She w^anted to be
far away from home : she revelled in storm clouds that
gathered, like waves before they break, on Queensberry
and the Lead Hills and Robert Bruce s citadel. After
we came back from this good expedition, I walked with
my host up the valley of the Soar, w^hich was knocking
its rocks about uproariously: w^e went on till we saw
the setting sun bumping against a very steep side of
russet hill. . .

Friday^ Aug. 31. Partridges making their wills.
I have had some music, the old Capenoch tunes. No
more squalls. . .

To-day I got well, and finished Les Travailleurs dc

176 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

ia Mer. It did not make me weep ; but, if you skip
resolutely, it is a very pretty, noble book — there is very
little French cruelty in it : one is very glad to have the
pieiivre slain. Gilliat's parting- speech to Deruchette, his
only speech, is extremely pretty ; his shyness is truly
admirable. I don't see how you could wish him to be
an accepted lover after he has lived two months on
molluscs, and become a Glaucus.

Does Victor Hugo hate his Rev. Ebenezer ? Does he
love his Deruchette 'i

The birds are charming when they let Gilliat drink
the rain with them out of the hollows of the rock,
and when they try to warn him away from the rising
tide. Who could wish to kill a bird } I shall call
seakail Deruchette henceforth. Gilliat's taking care
not to tread on his seakail which he planted for her is
a thing to be remembered : he is going to die, and
she is going far beyond the reach of his garden pro-
duce, and yet he will not tread on the things that he
grew for her. . .

The little lady of Capenoch has been lunching one
day with the Dormers, another day with the Lauries.
Her admirers pay a smart price for her sweet presence :
they must needs have somebody else with her. . .

It is strange that any one can be so good and gay as
she is with no duties. She has the salt of originality.
To-day she sat at dinner near her father, and the
green shade of his carving-lamp made her look like
a sea- nymph. . .

Sept. 2. The Soar runs past the kitchen garden up
to a scarped bank sloping very steeply, about twenty or
thirty feet perpendicular. The land above is full of
water-worn stones, proving that the river has eaten his

1865] CAMBRIDGE. HENRY BRADSIIAW 177

way down. It is bewildering" to think, what we are told
to believe, that all the indentations of a hill, and even of
a mountain district, arc due to water. The aching mind
goes over the time past like a swallow on the Atlantic.
If I had been taught geology at seventeen it would have
made me go crazy. . .

Sept. 4. I went straight back to Cambridge solitude,
not in good health. Next day, Sunday, I found myself
the senior in Chapel — our choir improved, and pleasant
after the Kirk Sabbaths. A dose of literary talk in
Bradshaw's rooms : his quiet enthusiasm about libraries,
when he described his working all day in the Bodleian
with his colleague Beasley, was strangely different from
the talk I hear elsewhere ; yet he has just as much
knowledge of and regard for live persons, and he is
just as hospitable, as the illiterate rich. . .

Tuesday, Sept. 11... When there I read Crowe
and Cavalcaselle on Italian painters. I was much inte-
rested in the account of Albertinelli : he was a fellow-
apprentice of Bartolommeo — he went off to the Medici
Gardens and Pagan art, while Bartolommeo fell under
the influence of Savonarola. When Bartolommeo be-
came a Dominican and was set to paint for his convent,
he got Albertinelli to come to him as his partner,
in a regular business-like way. The two ships that
had been parted met each other and sailed alongside.
Does not this happen with plain folks who are not
painters ? Two college friends part, the one secular,
the other devout : it may be that they may still love
each other, though the one burns the pretty things
which the other idolizes : it may be that they may work
together again after many years. . .

A family that knows illness has the due chiaroscuro :

N

178 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

an unbroken home is like one of those early Italian
pictures with g-old background and no shade. . .

Saturday^ Sept. 15. Back at King's, a nice family
dinner, without gowns, in the Combination room, the
faithful and fatherly Bursar ^ presiding. ' Where are
we to go to church to-morrow 1 ' said he, assuming
domestically that I should go with him, as I did last
year when the Chapel was shut. We agreed to try
the Simeonite church, where Birks preached. On
coming back we fell in with the excellent and learned
Munro. . .

Cambridge manners : at dinner a very good Professor,
Lightfoot, asked me to drink wine with him across the
table, conversation being impossible. . .

After dinner I sat next to a real genuine Cam-
bridge man — clever, loud-voiced, cheerful, humorous,
ardently fond of statistics : he was once a finished critical
scholar, and used to work with Montagu Butler at
correcting ' compositions ' ; then he became Bursar and
plunged into £ s. d., and now he glories in thinking
that in a few years he will have forgotten his Greek
alphabet. . .

We were lamenting the dechne of Cambridge : Munro
comforted me by saying, ' We are first in philosophical
mathematics. When I was at Athens I heard a learned
Frenchman talking to a learned German, and saying,
"Mathematics are not to be found in France nor in
Germany, hut in England : the three first mathemati-
cians in the world are Robinson, of Trinity College,
Dublin ; Sylvester, in London, advocate ; Arthur
Cay ley, also advocate " — giving all their names and titles
correctly.' . .

' Rev. T. Brocklcbank.

1865] CAMBRIDGE TALK 179

Mof/day, Sept. \j^ Breakfast in the Coml^ination
room. Hrocklchank entertained Franks the anticjuary
and Hradshaw ; Munro and Peters were my g^uests.
A breakfast of four courses with a hicky glimmer
of sunh'oht. . . We were talking; of going to the
Geological Museum : Franks said, ' You have something
there of oreat archacolocfical interest: a head of dos
pri'migcniiis'. it was found with the celt that killed it
actually sticking in it : you can see the dint on the
bone — but the celt is elsewhere.' We imagine that our
remote ancestor, the owner of the celt, irreverently
termed by one of us ' the savage,' had dug a pitfall for
the ancestor of our oxen, and so got well over his head.
Though Munro growled rather contemptuously, I took
the boy to see the fossils, but cut short my lecture on
trilobites and saurians to suit the Latinist : thence
I marched them to the Comparative Anatomy, and
luckily found my old pupil J. W. Clark ^ setting up
things in the workshops, probably things he had
brought back from Denmark, where the great Steen-
strup gave him (and he showed us) a sucker of the
biggest of all pieuvres. In a bottle he had the head
of a common one : he respected me for having seen
a live one at Nice, and for telling him the Norman
name of the beast, ' minaur.' He was told by Bursar
Hammond, a Jersey man, that the pieuvre is never
seen there — or if seen is harmless (it has another name
in Jersey). . . Clark says the Danes are extremely
civil to Englishmen, and talk English. I should like
to go there, if it were but to see people that return
good for evil.

' Registrary of the University.
N 2

i8o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Leaving- Munro to his Greek, I went awalking with
Brocklebank, who was full of things he had to tell me
about College business: e.g. he had new maps just
made of our neighbouring manors : Coton, Barton,
Grantchester, leaving out the freeholds and showing all
the little copyholds in their curious intricacy : without
such maps we actually lose property. . .

We went to Grantchester to look at bits of property,
to see the new schoolroom, and to visit a prosperous but
grumbling tenant who lives close to the beautiful church,
and close to Byron's pool, and very near Chaucer's
Trumpington Mill — as poetical a property as any noble-
man owns ; and no great county potentate is received
more kindly and respectfully than our bursar. It was
fun to see Mrs. L. first, and get her to give a rose-
coloured statement about crops, and then to draw out
her husband s moderate grumblings, and banter him for
not agreeing with his wife. The wretch is filling up an
old moat, and wants us to cut down some big trees.
We have about 1,200 acres in that \^ry pretty parish.
One may gloat over these things in the collegiate
spirit more inoffensively than one could in the family
spirit. . .

I left a slip of Haverholme myrtle in the flower-box
of the little drawing-room under the care of the amiable
gyp, picked one sweet rose in the College garden, and
went off (at i p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18) to school once
more : that is to say I went to a crinolinery or school of
politeness, to be on my best behaviour for three days,
and to learn the ways of womankind — which are on the
whole not wonderful. . .

I walked forth to look for hopping, but met the
hoj)])ers bringing away their ' cradles.' Then I thought

1865] CAMBRIDGE. CHAIVTON 181

I would do justice to Alton, which I h.id fancied was
a very i:)altry, vulgar town — so it is compared with
S lea ford. . .

Havino^ found two rather nice brick buildings, I gave
plenary absolution to Alton, and came back in that
happy hour in which things look well to me, my poor
eyes spreading out freely to them. Then I discerned
how pretty the houses are in Chawton. . .

These ^ are the men that you can rely on for the
uniform discharge of simple rural duties ; two hundred
years ago they would have gone meekly and resolutely
to die at Edgehill or to pay the sequestration in West-
minster. Croquet and crinoline and champagne make
no real difference : these men are just Church-and-King
men, as their forefathers were; the type was set early
in the seventeenth century, and remains substantially the
same still. These are the men whom, if I were a
minister of State, I should wish to please : they are
outside the Court circle, not known in the huge club
called ' Society.' If they keep away from electioneering
and share-gambling they may perpetuate their virtuous
and beneficent families beyond the lives of their yew-
trees.

I think I like them rather better than those who fill
their houses with the people they meet in London, and
[who] do not like having to entertain their humbler
county friends. . .

Light lie the snow^ on their goodly roofs — roofs
still beautiful with old mossy thatch ; but the cold
slate is creeping on eastward. It seems strange
that good old Wales and Cornw^all should spoil

' Resident country gentry.

i82 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept. 1863

the rural charms of the young- (g-eolog-ically) eastern
counties. . .

Parting : we pique ourselves upon it ; but horses feel
it too. Yesterday I had ridden with Stone to Hedsor
Hill : he was to go back by Cookham, I was to return
to dine at the Orkney Arms. His little mare struggled
against going down the hill ; Daisy was obedient in
going up, but soon she began to whinny, and she did it
twenty times, louder and louder, for miles, till she came
to the well-known inn, and knew that all chance of
recovering her companion was over. But when I go,
she does not whinny for me. They don't misplace their
affections as we do. . .

Friday^ Sept. 21. This year my brother reminded
me of what I was not likely to forget, but did not know
he remembered — how twelve years ago we noticed the
fact of its being St. Matthew s day that gave rest to our
father after his long endurance of pain, and how we
had thought of filling the only pretty foHated window in
Torrington church with the Call of Matthew, because
our father left his gold so early, gave up making mone}-
at thirty, and came home content with a sum on which
he could marry the cousin whom for ten years of exile
he had been hoping for ' . . .

I remember my mother saying, ' I hope you will
always feel, wherever you live, that Torrington belongs
to you still.' So we do. Now the old house is vacant;
the vine that I made them plant on the verandah must

' Cf. loiiica, II. 'A House and a Girl,' 1877 : —

* my P'ather like Matthew the publican ceased
full early from hoarding with stainless mind
to Torrington only and home inclined
where brotherhood cousinhood graced his fea^t,'

Aprii 1867] TORRINGTON. SUNDAY LESSONS 183

have been swin^inir its wild tendrils about the old bow-
window of the drawin^ii^-room with no one to scold it.
I wonder whether the h\^ arl)utus is alive, and the
jessamine still on the frail balustrade of the staircase
that led down from the verandah. I never go anywhere
without look in or for broad-leaved myrtle, because we
had one on the wall which screened off the little yard
where we had our workshop and brewery ; even a
round pear reminds me of the tree that grew at the
back of the dining-room ; and piously do I try to get
Devonshire plums preserved. . .

On the first day after the boys came back I rode to
White W^altham. . . The gossamers that day bothered
me more than I can remember since I walked to vStoke
thirty years ago. Are they not a symbol of the petty
hindrances that reformers meet with, or of the sniggering
frivolities that worry me in teaching boys } . . .

It seems a pity the tutors generally let Sunday
Private Business be a thorough bore to themselves as
well as the boys : they shirk it the first Sunday and
whenever they can. The boys actually hate doing the
Greek Testament on Sundays : how can it make them
religious ? They cannot hate the lives of good men :
and in reading Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography,
Southey's Life of Wesley, Christian biography pub-
lished by the Religious Tract Society, and similar books,
you get as much theology of all kinds as you can by
reading St. Pauls Epistles.

Nothing strikes me as more strangely infatuated than
the neglect of biography, and the turning Church
history into a set of councils and heresies.

184 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

To Lord Rosebery.

K. C. C, April 19, 1867.

I am going on to the Craven ; to the wild moors near
Jane Eyre's country ; to the valley of the Wharfe, where
the cruel Clifford raged ; to the house of endless weeping ' ;
to the Strid, where the greyhound pulled young Romilly
into the water ; to Wordsworth's, Landseer's, Rogers'
battle-ground ; to the domain of my Whig Chancellor
the Duke of Devonshire. . . I am reading Burton's
History 0/ Scotland^ out of sheer love of the country'.
He is a sceptical lawyer, and has no sense of shame in
cooking whole chapters out of negatives, showing one
what one knew perfectly well before, that there is no
Scottish history before the Norman Conquest, except
just a trace of truth about St. Columba and lona.

But in his subsequent volumes he will do better ; and
I wish to go with a solid legal guide over the Wallace,
Bruce, Stuart times, which are at present jewels of romance
and echoes of boyhood.

It .will be a new sensation to put the Black Douglas
and Ramsey of Dalwolsey down in a synchronism :
hitherto they have been to me of no age, only parts
of Walter Scott-world — the best world, the true golden
world. If there is a thing I should like to do, it would
be to go with some one like-minded, some one who
Waverleyed and Marmioned at eight years old, all over
Scott's haunts, particularly the Douglas-land, which he
visited at the very end of his beautiful life, when writing
Castle Dangerous. . .

Read all you can about St. Francis ; go to Assisi.
Tell the Italians, with my love, that I have subscribed

.867] SCOTLAND. CHARLOTTE BRONTE 185

fifty francs to Manin's monument. Insult Antonelli for
me, and, as time is up, believe me to be

Yours affectionately,

William Johnson.

Joiunial. Ilklry Wllls House, April 23, 1867. —
I spent an hour yesterday in Leeds. Once I had a
chance of seeing the people : there was a small crowd,
made of five or six globules like broken quicksilver,
waiting at the half-open door of the gaol, which is
part of the magnificent Town Hall ; a prison van was
waiting to receive some offender; nearest to the door
were pale silent women, and silent children, not theirs.
The only people talking were three biggish boys.
I drew up to listen : the biggest, a haggard face with
a small mouth, was telling the others how he had
ofiven evidence and had not been believed : he used
the most pandemoniacal language in perfectly cold
blood, had no trace of indignation at being treated as
a false witness, expected and got no grain of sympathy
from his listeners. I could not stay long enough to see
the prisoner, nor yet to verify Hartley Coleridge's
haunting sonnet about Leeds contrasted with West-
moreland— to see the ' nature ' which he said abode in
the black town no less than in the valleys of Helvellyn.
Anyhow, there must be Gospel there ; for they are
building a very elaborate ornate subdivided Infirmary
above the Town Hall; and there is patriotism, for they
have statues of Peel and Wellington. . .

Between Leeds and Ilkley were civil and handsome
people, and the women talk most musically. I read on
the way the first chapter of Charlotte Bronte's life, not

i86 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

believing the West- Riding folk to be nearly as brutal
as that book and Wuthering Heights make them out.
But I wish I could find Shirley and Jessie Yorke and
Caroline's mother, and her who wrote

' The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.'

I bought my Charlotte Bronte's life at a civil shop,
Crossley's at Rugby, where I saw three schoolboys leave
the shop arm-in-arm : nearly all the Rugby boys go arm-
in-arm, and just as often threes as twos. I saw one
fingering the new books : how kind booksellers are to
let schoolboys do so : I should have liked to give him
gold to buy some books ; if I were a little more venerable
in appearance I could do it and no one would stare. . .

Yesterday morning I left Everdon \ where the Rector -,
now old, with a heart complaint, and a voice failing
tenderly in administering the Lord's Supper to his son ;
— once a handsome man that used to dance in Devonshire ;
— he said he was glad to see me for the sake of my
father, ' an excellent man.' . .

It is a pretty case of a meek, modest man striving to
overcome evil with good. . . He told me how he
knew he had not vigour enough to conquer his rebel-
lious people, but thought he had not been wrong in
coming away after long toil from Barnstaple, to which
he was no longer ecjual. Since he has been at Everdon
he has had a better living offered him in Devonshire, but
he thought it wrong to take it, since he knew that they
wanted him only as an old man to hold it whilst they sold
the living, lit' talks smilingly of being the oldest life

' Everdon, Northamptonshire, an Kton College living.
' Kcv. 1 1. I.uxmoorc.

1867] ErEJWON. IIAWORTH PARSONAGE 187

on the copyhold property of my colleg-e, always called
over first by the Hiirsar. . .

2 p.m. WY-nt to Havvorth with three Butlers. . .
Throucrh Kcii>hlc'y — up a slope— down again to a rail-
way which gave us only forty minutes; up the steep
paved street of Haworth ; stopt at a shop, bought a
Ja)ie Eyre, so did Bowen ^ ; Montagu Butler bought
a Professor , as became his standing in the hierarchy ;
and from his copy I read once more the deeply pathetic
poem of Emily s called ' Remembrance,' and her song
which comes next but one. . .

We had been talking school shop so incessantly up
the street that it w^as hard to remember the sacred dead ;
but I did, at the right time and in the right way. And
glad to find Arthur Butler thinking as I do about Shirley,
the best of books. They told me what Richmond told
them about Charlotte Bronte s portrait. She was very
shy, and for two sittings he was out of hope ; but the
third time she met the Duke of Wellington's servant
leaving the house ; which made Richmond say, ' If you
had been here a quarter of an hour sooner you w^ould
have seen the Duke of Wellington.' Whereupon she
broke out into eager talking about the Duke ; and so
the painter caught the expression given in his portrait,
of which I bought a photograph in Keighley. When
Richmond was getting on well with the portrait she
stood behind him looking at it : he heard a sob — she
said, ' Excuse me — it is so like my sister Emily,'

We saw the little parsonage, altered by the substitution
of plate-glass for the ver^" small panes : a miserable
homestead, choked wuth big gravestones, with no garden
but the merest strip, no bigger than a bedroom passage ;

' E. E. Bowen, of Harrow.

i88 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

hardly a courtyard of any kind ; behind it, ugly stone
fences shutting off Emily's moor.

Out of that prison the little Charlotte put forth a hand
to feel for the world of human emotion. I wish she
would come back to us, and count up the myriads to
whom she has given new souls.

Now I remember reading Jane Eyre straight through
at a sitting in my home drawing-room, and again on the
black gnarled, wreathed rocks of Bude (1850) when there
was a lowering storm-cloud and a sunset on a distant
sail, and a hollow roar in the reefs, and the reading
broken off by a queer rattle of shingle which turned out
to be a sheep fallen from the cliff: the last summer
holidays spent with my mother. . .

Coming back up the moor by sunset I saw, to my
delight, a live bird perched on a wall : just in time with
my glasses. It was, my companion said, a ring ousel,
a blackbird with a white collar : I hardly ever saw a free
bird before — it was a great pleasure. . .

Fountains Abbey, April 24.— There were wood
anemones, which I have not seen for a long while, on the
bank further on : what can be prettier or more symbolical
of the Torridge ? There were horse-chestnuts drooping
into the lakes like weeping willows, and very fine Norway
pines feathering to the ground, and a wild cherry,
a blossom -bower in itself, but not half so lovely as the tall
one that had struggled up amidst larches and oaks at
Fawsley^ . .

His health goes . . . but not his generous, candid,
prying, ranging, comforting, truly youthful spirit.

' Fawslcy I*ark ^Sir Charles Knightlcy's , near Evcrdon.

1867] CAMBRIDGE, TIIIRrEENTII CENTURY 189

How many venerations of orderly life, how many
growths of literary sentiment have been needed to make
the existence of such a man possible ; a man who still, in
the midst of the whole drift of metropolitan currents, can
love dead men as if they were alive, and treat living- men
as reverently as the dead, and carries about with him
a whole contrreorition of invisible souls. . .

Talking of the great time, George IV s reign, when
Whew^ell was tutor, when Sterling, Monckton Milnes, &c.,
were students, [M. Butler] said : ' Those young men would
now be at Oxford. I little thought I should ever be
a traitor to Trinity ; but I am obliged to advise my best
boys to go to Oxford. Eton is the only school that
continues to send its best men to Cambridge. We are
losinof at Cambridpfe all the materials out of which we
should make professors and statesmen.' He spoke ver\^
highly of Kingsmen, as distinguished from other Cam-
bridge men, of their going to Dresden as their finishing
school, and carrying on high self-culture. He counted
up all the University scholars we have at Eton as
masters ; a topic which I should have been too proud to
start, but I don't mind another person touching it lightly.
* We are not so far from the sun, nor do we carry such
blunted hearts,' &c. (Fox's last quotation but one from
Virgil.) . . .

April 2^]. I have been trying here of a morning to
read the earliest English poetry, written in the fascinating
thirteenth century, coeval with the intersecting round
arches that make pointed arches in Bolton choir, and
with the noble pointed windows of Fountains, coeval
also with the pious sorrow of the foundress of Bolton
Abbey, whose boy was drowned by his greyhound in
the Wharfe. I picked up a sparkling egg-like pebble

iQO LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

there, which was shaped, I dare say, before the boy of
Egremont fell in. I wish there were, besides metrical
versions of the story of Joseph, and Havelok the Dane,
some few lines about the loves and the sorrows of the
very people who saw these most poetical of buildings
when fresh in their first marvellousness. The bereaved
mother could not say — for there were no words then to
say it in — ' My grief shall arise and stand fast in the
pillars of the house of prayer, and the memory of my
child shall endure in beauty of carven stone.'

Did she see the stones put together in these fair
forms ? Did the masons care for her loss ? Did the
widows widowed by the sword of William Fitz Duncan
come to pray in the new church ? Did the monks
grumble at leaving Embsay, or did they rejoice in the
broad grassy platforms above the Wharfe ?

All is gone but the noble stones. ' All else is passed
away : they have left us their adoration.' . .

' To be a great statesman one must have a capacity for
great friendships.' This formula I laid before M. Butler
yesterday, and he was much impressed: yet he con-
sidered sceptically whether in fact there have not been
great statesmen without great friendships, such as Pitt.
So he got on his favourite topic. Peel, over whose
death he mourned as a schoolboy, and he told me how
moved he was by the beautiful little speech made
in perfect English six days after Peel's death by the
French Ambassador, Drouyn de I'Muys — ending with
' Long may the spirit of that great man preside over
the place of his education : I can wish nothing better
for Harrow than that it may produce another Robert
Peel; . .

1867] ^^/A' A\ PKEL AND HARROW 191.

Eton, yiitj^. 4, 1867. — The summer is ^one. All my
French wine drunk ; [ap.inese h'ly flowered and faded ;
several rowdies subdued ; two or three victims of un-
punctuality partly cured ; fii^^-ht with the Gas Company
over, with defeat ; farmhouse at Stourton ^ rebuilding- ;
reform talk with two or three public men seemingly
wasted ; my country clinging to perplexities of readjust-
ment-; my building scheme for King's College printed,
circulated, praised, and cushioned softly by well-meaning-
supporters ; only four men elected to Eton Scholarships,
though we tried to get five ; Procter, a genuine priest,
going to take Richmond Vicarage in succession to
H. Dupuis '\ whom I sincerely eulogized in Cloister
Speech.' . .

June saw my old home turned into a tradesman's
school. I refused to guarantee the master's salary with
North Devon magnates, but promised twenty pounds
(earned in Cambridge Local Examinations) to be spent,
by me, on books for the use of the boys, to fill my
father's honoured shelves in what was his dining-room
and became his breakfast- room. I have been meditating-
and practising for my Essay, now advertized, on the
cultivation of the reasoning faculties, and I am just going-
to begin it in high spirits.

' It matters not what we do, but what we are : ' this is
Miss Martineau's preaching, and after many years it
came back to me from a devout preacher, my brother.
E. does nothing for us or to us — but he is to us and for
us a treasure. All he lacked before was warmth of

^ In North Devon.
* Lord Derby's Reform Bill.

" Rev. Harry Dupuis, Fellow of King's and Assistant Master at Eton,
Vicar of Richmond.

192 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

heart ; and this, as I foresaw, but sooner than I foresaw,
is come. . .

Towards the end of the half I bored every one with
bits of poetry : there was an anonymous bit, an invoca-
tion to spirits who heal bodily weariness, asking- them
for a charm against mental weariness, which affected
me a little ; there were Worsley's pathetic lines about
music, and Shairp's simple Scottish lines about the
trysting bush of Traquair, and that strangely pretty bit
of the Odyssey^ where Alcinous says to Ulysses, ^ Tell me,
my guest, why did you weep just now when the bard
sang of the woe of the Trojans and Greeks ? why, the
god, you know, devised it all ; he brought about this
great suffering that there might be song for the men of
after time' Even so — men must struggle and die that
their names may be playthings for poets; Marie Antoinettes
agonies are our jewels ; we pick violets off the graves of
the wronged women and the stricken heroes.

On the last Sunday there was no Private Business :
but my lower-boy pupils, who had been feasting with me
overnight, came for an hour, and I read them Enid^ the
dream of the carp, and all about the faded silk. . .
I offered to read aloud after dinner the extracts in the
I)apers from the Queen's book about her marriage — one
lower-boy came, and two or three Fifth- Form — one of

these was , who mocked, and met the fate of Ishmael.

Her Majesty is the only topic on which I can tolerate no
difference of opinion. . .

At 6.30 p.m. I went to dine with the College — too
early — had to sit in a desolate shabby drawing-room
b<*longing to a l^^cllow, a wasted place, commandinj;

» Odyss. VIII. 57O-580.

1867] EDWARD IRVING. ACHILLES 193

a Sabbatlc.'il view : I almost coveted w^hat he could not
use. I should like rooms in that quadranirlc, as a master,
not as a retired cripple. There was one book there,
a volume of lulward Irving's life : for twenty minutes
I was with a prophet. I see he w^as sponged upon by
a literary adventurer, a pious drunkard or the like. To
be a public man is to forfeit hberty : to be a prophet
is to dispense with the power of seeing more than one
thing at a time. Irving kills himself by overstrain
of nerves ; so does Montagu Butler ; ' and we, whose
hearts are dry as summer dust, live on.' But Socrates
was lifted up against the fear of death when he thought
of Achilles, the young man whom his mother could not
check, whose life could not be hoarded, who would not
for all her weeping stay by the ships to cumber the
ground, with his comrade lying dead and unavenged.
And Prince Max of Mexico, I now read, would not take
his life w^hen he might have got away, for his faithful
foUow^ers w^ere to die : Publius Crassus over again,
not to speak of Sir Guy of Linteged in the Duchess
May. . .

I have not been so industrious for a long time as I have
been since Easter. This last week, in the midst of the
pleasures and excitements, I did elaborate papers for
Collections, one of which stirred up the men if not the
boys. . . I got all the sent-up exercises out of hand in
proper form, and wrote all my reports but eight, which
have been done since reaching Paris, when my travelling
companion was asleep. . . Thanks to the blessed
summer with his healthful joyousness, there w^as no
actually bad report, none that did not smell of hope and
charity : I found many of the boys had improved since
Easter. There was failure enough to record in the way

O

194 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

of mathematics, which, however, is not in any way my
fault. There was success in French . . . and I have
rubbed out another letter of Ichabod. . .

Paris, Aug. 6. — The Bridge of Jena is the approach to
the Exhibition : no wonder Prussia cuts a poor figure.
I fed fat my grudge by buying candlesticks in Austria
and paper-knife in Denmark. It was agreeable to hear
English ladies at a restaurant noticing with disgust the
horrible sounds made in conversation by some Germans,
and to read the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. . . I wish
some one were here that would take me through Paris
archaeologically. The hollyhocks, &c., in the Tuileries
garden are the pleasantest things I have seen, except the
river with its quays by certain lights. But I think of all
that I have seen, I liked best the bird-shop near the
Pont Neuf, and the old man telling the old woman
(perhaps his wife, and they were dimanching) the names
of the birds — ' merle this,' and ' merle that,' and ' cardinal,'
to the accompaniment of her feeble but cheerful laugh.
The trader who exhibits these birds gives a hundred
times as much pleasure as the competitors for prizes in
the Bazaar. Working folk stop on their way in the
sunshine to look at the bright, restless things and the
magic turns of their little hidden necks. . .

Exeter, Aug. 13. — St. Malo at sunset— the old draw-
bridge and portcullis and machicoulis. Hotel Franklin
out of sight, up a corner, scjueezed in between houses,
hiding a dead wall with green things; a row of lights to
show off the name of the Inn ; flowers below. No room
in the house ; sent down a ' drang ' into a very small
street, all alive with happy children, to an old tall stone
house —through a filthy cave up a wretched winding stair
to a respectable bedroom and good bed, toilet apparatus

1867] PARIS. ST. MALO. JERSEY 195

quite Lilliputian, no carafe. I>cft my bag- after a wash-
let ; went out to walk— along- the quay by moonlight. . .

On the d.iy of St. Grouse I navigated the Mare
Durandicum ; iiujuired (in vain) for the Douvres ; saw
none of Ciilliat's birds ; saw St. Sampson's at some
distance, and the cave at St. Peter Port, where Deruchette
took boat. Spent the long day, fourteen hours' voyage,
between reading Balzac, dozing, hanging over the bows,
in a profusion of sweet sea air, looking at a purple sea,
with now and then a roundish patch of brown weed. . .

The rocks at Jersey are finer in colour than I expected,
and two of them very bold and columnar : but it
is not so grandiose as Peter Port with its quays and
breakwater.

As w^e went from Jersey Elizabeth Castle treated us to
three or four shots, screeching imploring things, probably
addressed to a target : an unwonted sound, like the voice
of an animal hurt..

I am glad to have crossed the Channel at its full
breadth, besides the compliment to Victor Hugo, and
the treat of entering Devonshire by a new approach.
I could not have done this another year, for the Eclair —
so called because she is very slow — is going to be taken
off for failure. Dartmouth by moonlight was quite the
pretty thing it was said to be, and the Castle Inn was
quite as comfortable. . .

A pretty journey round by Teignmouth to Exeter —
everything looking its best. . . I have seen the lovely
cathedral once more, in evening light, under the guidance
of a vergeress, who told me a great deal and showed me
much that was new to me. I still feel a considerable
amount of interest in eighteenth- and even nineteenth-
century inscriptions. . . The most interesting monument

O 2

196 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

to my mind was a tablet with a relief representing an organ
and music-book and a young man kneeling before it :
he is Matthew Godwin, bachelor of music, organist of
Exeter and Canterbury, w^ho died in the eighteenth year
of his age, 1585; and the Latin speaks of his ^ eterna
meinoria ' as if he were a genius. Was he ? That was
our great time for music, when we wrote madrigals
better than other nations. . .

I resume this epopee on Saturday night, Aug. 1 7, in
the parsonage of Clovelly, where I am guest of my
Brother, the temporary incumbent. . .

A tig. 17. Map and compass to fall back upon. We
cut the road and stept into the quagmires, keeping two
points to the west of north. Found my old Burnham
friend the cotton-rush ; bogs contemptibly easy ; peat
carts to be seen and heard ; cattle close to the swamps
with no one to watch them ; Dartmoor an imposture ;
Cawsand obscure. . . We dipped down a steep slope,
and found the young Taw, about four paces in breadth,
to be forded, a charming still stream, with here and
there a little break hardly amounting to a 'stickle.'
Shoes off, ineffables tucked up. We stood a long time
on comfortable crumbs of granite, which harboured the
feet nicely but made no mud. . . Over a ridge down
into the valley of the Okement ; but here were three
little babblers nearly parallel, with beautiful deep, ferny,
furzy, heathery banks — mere baby streams such as one
often sees in hills ; but the sedate girlhood of the Taw
was matchless. In these fair valleys, with clear views of
Yes Tor and his crags, we enjoyed the fulfilment of our
hopes. All this was really Dartmoor, a good bit of it
seen to the greatest advantage, and we had little sabbaths
on chosen slabs of granite or cushions of turf: no insects,

1867] EXETER. CLOVELLY. HATHERLEIGH 197

no crawlers, no birds, no life at all — not enoui^h breeze.
About 6.0 we came to a little half-bank, and saw
Okehampton lyini^ hospitably before us. . .

Next day after breakfast we drove southward on the
old coach-road to Plymouth ; stept out and clambered
down into a wonderful tangle-wood of ash, oaks and all
manner of underwood, in which were hidden the ruins of
the old Castle ^ : except at one point there was hardly any
of the architecture left ; but it must have been a great
pile, built at different times along the slope of the ridge
facing the moor, looking on the little Okement. Never
have I seen ruins so ruinous, so ivy-ridden, so impossible
to climb, so conquered by green vegetable life. Here
w^e parted for a few hours. Luxmoore ^ took the trap
to go on to Bridestow, w^here his grandfather had been
clergy^man and had built a good house ; a jolly, kindly
man, kindly remembered by Balls the innkeeper. Lux-
moore went to see old humble retainers, and one of them,
Mrs. Bevan, who keeps the shop of the village, enter-
tained him on stuffed roast beef, on broad beans and
kidney beans done in cream, with a rueful bottle of wine :
her customers sw^arming at the very window, she would
not serve them ; that day she was entertaining a Luxmoore
and had a right to be a lady, she said. . .

Sunset at Hatherleigh : we watched the people coming
in and listened to elaborate bell-chimes. Luxmoore let
out some of his strong fantasies — hatred of plate glass,
belief that in the days of almsgiving monasteries the
people did not bring into the world such large families
so recklessly ; whereupon I suggest that w^e have no
record of their infanticides nor of the sweeping small-

' Berry Pomeroy.

^ H. E. Luxmoore, M.A., Assistant Master at Eton.

198 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

poxes. In truth it seems to me that our diiSficulties in
this age, our despair about the peasants, our failures in
trying to raise them, are mainly due to an honourable
reason — a scrupulous anxiety to keep up human life
when once started, in however frail a form.

Friday, Aug. 16. Off at 8.0; soon at Hatherleigh
Moor. Stopt a moment to look at the obelisk with
a bronze rilievo recording that William Morris, colonel,
was born at Fishleigh . . . and died at Poonah, aged
thirty-eight. He used to ride to hounds as a boy
with my Brother, and grew up a famous rider and still
more famous swordsman. He led the 17th Lancers
into the Russian host at Balaclava — taken prisoner ;
escaped in the confusion by throwing himself though
wounded on a stray horse, and hanging on to his neck,
guiding him into the line of the Russian gunshots, where
he knew no Russian horseman would follow him. He
dropt off senseless, no one knows where, and was brought
in by our searching parties. This bringing in is so
signified by the bronze rilievo. On that bleak moor,
which might be a battlefield but seems so far from works
of art, there was a little pathos in the figures of two
soldiers bearing a wounded comrade. I never saw
Wm. Morris, but I contributed to give him a sword of
honour in lieu of the sword he lost in battle. He died
of dysentery on the way to the Indian Mutiny. I hope
he will be rememlx^red.

Wc were in a great hurry, walking five miles an hour.
I was vexed at not remembering the way. Not till
I got to Iddesleigh Church, walking like demon horse-
men up the hill, did I feel at home. Coming round
a corner my companion gave a little cry of pleasure —
he saw hounds. Presently we were in a sea of kind dog-

1867] JIATHERLEIGH MOOR. HALSDON 199

faces with three scarlets : ' Mr. Rolle's ? ' ' Yes, sir.'
This was hkc Columbus meeting- birds on the Atlantic.
Soon came the barn where my Brother used to draw
rein for a grand view of the Torridge valley backed
by Dartmoor. . .

Down we strode merrily, the view lovely : came upon
a bridge with a cry of ' lost my way ! ' It was New Bridge,
and I had turned to the left unwisely : but I would not
go back ; kept along- the river through a sweet bit of
woodland, to the right through fields to the well-
remembered Brightley, and there was Halsdon in sight ;
down again to Mrs. Budd's mill and a brilliant cottage-
garden ; up through Woolridge coppice, skirting the
much-beloved woods with veneration ; then on to the
road, up above Dillon's cottage, along the road which
I first traversed in a mourning coach following my
grandfather's coffin in 1832. Then came the first formal
tips of firs and larches, and the unaltered gate : there
was good Walter Fry in sight, and Walsh the gentleman
tenant resting on his sticks, gouty, but not grumpy. The
two wonderfully old w^alnut trees were alive, touched up
a little ; nor did I really miss the huge elm that fell just
before the owner went away. The best ash was greatly
improved ; Luxmoore saw tw^o green woodpeckers ; the
raw new front of the house was set in rich clematis well
grown. The rhododendron beds were bright and full and
well trimmed, L. admired the pretty colt's stable, built of
split larch, just in the dip to the south of the house ; the
old beech avenue was inviolate ; the old stable had all
its ivy ; there was a new granary ; Douglas pines and
the like had grown up. . . All my Brother's plantings
and clearings had answered, and Walsh said with some
pride as well as truth that it was the prettiest place in

200 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

the north of Devon. We ate sandwiches and drank good
milk at 1 1 a.m. in the Httle panelled dining-- room. The
visit was over in half an hour. . . I hated having to
be civil where I was in a fragrance of sentiment. . .

We had been seven hours on our legs, all but a few
minutes spent with Walsh, and it was the sharpest walk
I ever took. . . We took a look at the central square,
then up South Street, hurrying past my home. . . .
I ran off to our graves, and was for a sacred minute
alone : unwillingly saw our church, now so altered
inside that one would not know it — my Father's font
moved to the west end, the gallery where we used to sit
swept away — all right no doubt, but

A very hasty cup of tea in Palmer's drawing-room . . .
and the rattling coach, hastening to catch a train, sum-
moned us off and snatched me through the town, down
over the common only too rapidly : I was at Bideford
before I had done homage. Then all was dull and dark,
till at the turnpike we were accosted by two women in
a market cart, going back from Clovelly, w^here they
had spent the day : Betsy the Torrlngton cook and Betsy
the old laundress : very cordial both.

The long day ended in domestic tea, home in a
borrowed house : and with it ended a most prosperous
little tour, four days of Devonshire without rain and yet
without dust : this last day had a hospitable breeze that
enabled me to make a forced march, and I think the
mind had its breeze too. . .

Clovklly. — The church, where on Good Friday, 1 865,
I was alone, and was bored by a farmer showing me the
place in a prayer book, was on Aug. 18 this year crowded
with listeners to my Brother, who preached twice with
extraordinary fervour and penetration, without l)Ook. . .

1867] TORRINGTON. CLOVELLY CHURCH 201

What a contrast between those two sermons and the
little scrap that I wrote that niirht, by way of bc^innincr
my essay for Farrar. I put it in here i\s a curiosity.

'A man en^a^ed in a lifelong- task without g-enius
and without fixed ideas is likely to have his course
of action modified from time to time by striking- upon
some hint or some maxim. Amongst many sayings
that have acted on me almost like omens I may here
mention two. They are perhaps discordant, perhaps in
harmony. It was said by a learned academical man :
*' Every school should make the most of that which is its
characteristic ; Eton should continue to cultivate taste."
Some one else of equal authority has said : " It is greatly
to be lamented that for so many years of early life the
reasoning faculties should be almost entirely neglected."
At different times of my life I have been moved by both
of these remarks. After oscillations which would be
worth recording if they were not thought irrelevant to
the topic I have been asked to handle, I flatter myself
with the belief that I have settled down into a practical
routine which results from both these forces ; and after
twenty years of petty toil I am sometimes tempted to
imagine that I know how to combine the cultivation
of taste with the cultivation of the reasoning faculties.'

Next day I cancelled this and began again with less
pomp. Yet this rejected passage is really, I think, true
in itself, and the keynote of my essay ^. Nevertheless
I have done better in sinking' Eton 'and the first person,
and in treating ' taste ' as itself a function of the reason.
Whatever may be the fate of my essay, I adhere to this
discarded preface: it pleases me; it is written in the

^ * On the cultivation of the reasoning faculty,' in Essays on a Liberal
Education, edited by the Rev. F. W. Farrar.

202 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

style which I respect, only it is too great an effort to
keep it up ; it is, if I am not mistaken, a style founded
on two opposites, Dr. Johnson and Lord Macaulay.

Monday, Aug. 19. A day of suppressed thunder.
I sat in all the morning" writing carefully, and when
I dressed to go to the croquet party at Clovelly Court
I felt that I was sure to get the job finished. No dread
of procrastination : and it has been this dread which has
kept me from making literary engagements.

It is nine years since I shut myself up in a mean
village inn to prepare rhymes for the press : a fortnight's
solitude. 'Iole\' sunset on the Thames: sculling, with
a little boy to steer, up and down the waters of Maple-
durham ; then Torquay visited by moonlight ; then
Halsdon in the glory of repose, and my little modest
proof-sheets to correct in that peaceful home. That
humble venture brought me at least one friend, Montagu
Butler. Perhaps this other bit of printing \\nll get me
a friend, or strengthen an alliance. I am like Armstrong
in the upturned boat in the Atlantic, chewing a tobacco-
pouch, and feebly waving a little rag, to which a ship
bears down wonderingly. . .

Tuesday. We went to Hartland, left the pony carriage,
walked on through the Abbey grounds to the Quay,
where nothing grows but a few sprays of tamarisk,
a little grass, and samphire : we sat close to a fallen
signal- post and a battered figurehead doing duty for
ghost, and watched the blossoms of sea-scud fluttering
and alighting on the little patch of turf Then we
walked on the steep slope of down, to the little water-
fall which ended a little rill's life in a cleft between two
promontories and was blown back like ' the wasted

' /onica, I. p. 8.

1867] ESSAYS ON A LIBERAL EDUCATION 203

purpose ' in ' Lotos Eaters ' by a mio^hty wind from the
Atlantic. The rill is perfectly sheltered all the way till
it comes to the edge, and runs very quietly almost on
level ground, little thinking what a broad ocean and
what a buffeting gale it is going to meet. There is just
a paddock, cushioned between sheepwalk and protecting
westerly knoll. I should like to build a house there.
Nothing comes to Hartland Quay but coals ; and half of
them, I should think, must fail to land. . .

NORTHAM, Thtirsday.Aug. 22.— Once more I watched
the little waves thinning into mere laminae like mother-
of-pearl, the delicatest thing that water ever did. . .
Truly I was that day avenged on my dull childhood :
I saw so much better, with so many glasses and a mind
so enlivened. The hours floated on, and I did not tire
of looking at the glorious level and curve of the land and
the infinite poetry of the sky, getting sweeter towards
sunset. Thirty years ago my mother may have seen it
all as I saw it then. I used in bookish times to wonder
at her caring to sit still and gaze and breathe : in gazing
and blessing the good air I almost do penance now.

I like mountains well enough : but they are not so fair
nor exhilarating as a level with a little gradual slope to
it and a great curve dying away in the distance and
a sky mirrored in thin water.

To Lord Rosebery.

Hagley, Sept. I, 1867.

. . . Mr RoUe . . . keeps a pack of hounds much too
good for the country : his Christian name is Mark, and
the countrv^ people think it is a title, and call him Mark
RoUe with a reverential purpose. The huntsman invited

204 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

my brother to see the hounds, not exactly on the sly,
but at six in the morning, killing- a cub in my cousin's
woods, which proved to be highly blameable woods,
having no way of escape at one end. They persuaded
me with ease to leave my bed at five and mount a hunter.
I went just to see my near relative once more in a tally-ho
attitude. I thought of blind fences, and seemed to myself
like the man in Happy Thoughts ; but after an hour's
pottering I went home to breakfast, trusting implicitly
to the horse for finding the way ; and a single hound,
having lost itself, went with me. Strange to say we fell
in with half the pack under the command of a whip.
But I persevered in cramming dovvn my breakfast; and,
in fact, I had to go on with my Essay on education,
which is now in the press, whilst waiting for my food.
The host, my cousin, who is stout and sportsmanhke,
was there, to my surprise, announcing that I had missed
the death of the cub, who fell close to our point of
departure. On reflection I think that hunting amongst
corn sheaves, with a great quantity of brambles in full
foliage, is rather risky ; and I am glad to have come
away unscathed.

I am very well satisfied with North Devon, since our
Member' is ruler of India, and his former opponent. Lord
Clinton, is under-ruler.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Eton. Oct. 8, 1867.

It is odd that you should talk about my writing a book
by instalments. I do ever>' vacation write a genuine,
original book, my Journal, for about three re;iders :
these last eight weeks made a hundred ciuarto pages.

' Sir Stafrord Norlhcotc, Secretary for India.

1867] MR. ROLLE'S HOUNDS. LUCRETIUS 205

I believe every man of sensibility miirht with some
advnntatrc do this, omitting all me^irrims, grumblings and
sneers. This is more wholesome, I think, than cooking-
novels, or parasitically growing out of the bones of
a dead man, or serving up with paradox sauce some
very stale stuff about a past generation.

There are two kinds of books I should like to write —
one a novel, if I could form a plot ; secondly, a biography
of some man of my own time whom I reverence, like
Sir James Outram, from papers. In particular I should
like to write the life of the late Lord Dalhousie.

Journal. Eton, OcL 9, i p.m. — I was alone in my
palace of art, hard at work with French grammar and
dictionary and Eugenie de Guerin, making out a paper
of questions and translations for M. to do. Then I set
myself to do a copy of easy lyrics for one of the masters
to set to his division : the men cannot make them simple
enough. I chose Calypso. It was very tough work to
make it sensible stuff, and yet run quite smoothly and
lucidly. I had done it and copied it out by 4.20, and
found it was a little poem ^ . .

To F. War re Cornish.

Eton, Nov. 16, 1867,

One thing I resolutely do, refuse to take any advantage
of age ; another thing is uttering no complaints ; a third
is facing the plain truth of my own unfitness to lead.

Twenty years ago I copied into my most private MS.
book this sentence : ' How necessary it is that they who
place themselves at the head of generations which they
are to conduct to good or evil should first reflect on

^ * Calypso,' in Lucretilis,

2o6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

what they have done to be worthy of acting upon minds,
and whether, before demanding- the obedience of others,
they have learnt to respect themselves' (Count Mole's
speech : French Academy).

I have no right to let myself be called a leader ; nor
can I consent to be treated at all as a representative of
Eton. If there is anything to be done (as I have said
to-day in a letter to Warre, which you may see) I am as
ready as any one to sit in council, to listen and endure,
and in due time speak. . .

For the love of Montagu Butler I endured many hours
of discussion of pedagogy with him and Bowen and two
more Butlers last Easter ; but as a general rule I have
very little sympathy with schoolmasters as such, and
have very little faith in schools or schooling.

I consented to write a paper for Farrar, avowedly
a fragmentary collection of suggestions, partly because
I like writing, partly because I thought it might fetch
me some real friend like M. Butler, who, I fancy, made
my acquaintance because of something I had printed.
But I think I have done enough just for this year in
giving the profession my twenty hours' work, the pages
sent to Farrar. Pride partly, the pride which tramples
upon vanity ; want of faith partly, or, as I said yesterday,
want of a hope ; consciousness of ignorance partly ; a sense
of staleness above all — these are the reasons for not
following up my Farrar job with conversations such as
one would have at Browning's or at Wayte's house
about school.

In avoiding visitors, such asConington or Mrs. Evans \
I am perfectly consistent ; I have done just the same
with gentlemen like Tearson of Oriel and Woodward -

' Grorgc Kliot. ^ Ikr Majesty's Librarian.

.867] POSITION AT ETON 207

of Windsor Castle : they called on me, and I did not
even return the call.

I cannot entertain such people ; and I avoid their
acquaintance just as poor married people decline dinner
parties.

I decb'ne also all invitations to Harrow, and to Glad-
stone's and Lord Houofhton's ' breakfasts.' . .

I go to the Athenaeum very seldom, and never speak
to any one there unless addressed first. I never call upon
the Fellows of Trinity except to get a lesson in anatomy
from my old pupil J. W. Clark. I avoid the Richmond
dinner, since they took to making me speak.

All this is, I fancy, of a piece. It is proud unworldli-
ness. It is not ' abstention ' nor ' abdication.'

No one shall ever say that I do not willingly follow
when another man leads, as is said of Cicero \njtilms
Caesar. . . I am ready with sympathy and with criticism
for you and the rest, provided they be not hardened
frivolists. Ftcngar vice cotis.

The worship of celebrity is the way of the world, and
I do not object to it any more than to the love of money
or to the love of connexions. But I think it less
favourable to wisdom than that kind of life which is
described by Henry Taylor as ' the Life Poetic,' the
looking at the world from a distance : it is this Taylorian
life that I would wish to lead. He (H. Taylor) teaches
me that if I cannot be in Parliament I can nevertheless
do some sort of parliamentary work and practise par-
liamentary arts and virtues in a small sphere of action
like a parish vestry.

You have conveniently given me an opportunity of
making a clean breast of it ; and I may as well add to all
this apologia pro vita inea that I have another peculiar,

2o8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

perhaps temporary, reason for sticking to business : it
is my only honourable way of an ^wering those who do
me the disservice of making my old employers and
old pupils think that I am likely to go from Eton, and
that I am broken in health.

I am working harder at actual scholarship and school
work than I ever did, except sixteen years ago, perhaps.
I am more thoroughly Etonian than I have been of late
years, more interested in the few boys that I have to
deal with, more content with my employment. At the
same time I cannot help being aware that I am quite
out of fashion and on the shelf as a tutor ; and without
at all moaning over it I am, perhaps, on my mettle,
trying to do what I have to do better than I did in the
days when I was in request.

Would you care to read such a thing as a Journal of
mine } I write journals for one or two friends, very
garrulous sometimes ; and, as nine years ago I gave you
an anonymous booklet \ so now I offer you, as a sign
of friendship and confidence, my prose sentimentalities :
they would, perhaps, convince you that I am not materially
altered by the sentiment which is herein avowed ; not
a bit blase or embittered or ' torified.'

I make no excuses for this egotism, you drew it on
yourself

Journal, HiCKLETON, Dec, 2^, 1867, midnight. —
I came here for the ?th time, arriving in the forenoon.
My friend - came lightly down the staircase to meet me,
and took me to the library. . .

He gavt; mc a little book, lyic Drcaffi 0/ Geronthis^
a poem by J. H. Newman, on death and purg-atory :

' Itnica. '■* Charles Wood.

1^7] BISHOP ABRAHAM. CALVINISM 209

3trai\trcly fascinating for the writer's sake, not vul<2;^ar
like ordinary Popery.

Thouo;h ill a bit, 1 am revived by being- here ; it
makes me fancy once more that I am near the heart
of my country, and in some sense ennobled. I think
if I write a letter from here it will be in purer English
and more courteous. . .

A letter from Mrs. Abraham asking me to receive her
boy as a pupil. I wrote back to say ' I shall be happy
to do so, though I know I am unworthy to receive the
son of so good a man. There is no man whose voice
and countenance come back so frequently to m}^ memory;
and I never tire of telling my younger colleagues what
sort of man he was at Eton,' &c. She liked this : sent
it on to the Antipodes. How strange that he should let
his son come to me ! not a promise either. Statesmen
might well come to me, but why an earnest preacher ?

I have put up the arms of his see ^ in the stained
window^ of my College Hall this year, without telling
him. His deep tones sound along the diameter of this
globe and reach me.

' There is no refuge from the virtues which are not
our own except by loving them.' . .

Dec. 3 1 . This is the second time in a fortnight that
I have had to discuss with earnest believers topics which
used to shrivel me up : now I talk to them as if I had
' thrown under my feet all terrors and inexorable fate
and the roaring of gluttonous Acheron.' But I have not
quite arrived at this. I can only say that if I had been
Creator I should not have let men know they were to
perish : I should not have created them for my own
' glory,' but for their happiness. In truth the Calvinistic

1 Wellington, N. Z.
P

210 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec. 1867

Demiurgus is not so good as a humble- minded evan-
g"elical philanthrope.

To-day I had a fine long discussion with my host ^ on
the decay of political integrity, drew him out well and
gainsaid him handsomely ; he admitted freely that our
modern statesmen are much more virtuous in freedom
from personal interest than their predecessors, and it is
only in the abandonment of party principles and in weak
concessions to the public that they are culpable. He
admitted also that our inferior parliament men are better
than good French politicians, and that no country would
compare with ours in the voluntary labours of commis-
sioners, committee-men, &c. ; also that we are still
governed by the best informed^ and that the Tifues has
less power than it had, and that Tories in office are
virtually good Whigs, and come out improved ; and
much else of this kind — indeed, I got him to take a more
cheerful view of things. We had before, whilst walking
in the woods, had a very interesting talk about the
diplomatic service, which he began. He told us that
Palmerston never could bear to hear people say that
Russia or any other nation had its own way in diplomacy
a bit more than lingland ; he agreed when I said that
for the eighty years between Marlborough and the great
French War we always cut the French out or got them
to follow us. He thinks (perhaps justly) that there has
been a mistake made in giving all the embassies to men
bred in the diplomatic service, which has become too
much of a regular profession.

Our talk was broken off by the crack of a whip: sud-
denly we found the woods swarming with dogs and red
coats. I am no judge of these things, but to me it

* The laic Lonl Halifax.

Jan. 1868] WHIG VIRTUE. COMPENSATIONS 211

seemed as startling as the outbreak of the tartans from
the heather in the Lddy of the Lake, and as the sun
slanted in .i^aily and hit the stems of birch and beech we
had as brilliant a show as any painter could wish for. . .

King's College, CAMBRiDGE,/<2w^^^?ry9, 1 868. — After
Hall : in my home again : no one to speak to. Dinner
took twenty minutes . . . dining in my great coat is not
so very cheerful. Waiting in Combination Room . . . not
very lively : yet more comfortable than the life of the
poor husky night-superintendent at the Great Eastern
Station, who is up all night attending to coal trains, who
hospitably entertained me on a stool one November night
last year, and confided to me that he should like some
other place. How he would envy me my sofas, my two
fires, my four candles, my absolute freedom, my excellent
bed. As I write I hear the eerie wailing of the steam,
the melancholy music reserved for the mortalibus aegris
of this age. . .

I am now as old as a Roman consul or the victor of
Waterloo. How many hundreds of men are at this time
of life confessedly disappointed men, biting their fate as
the snake bit the file. I am better off than two -thirds of
barristers, engineers, sea captains, and parsons of my
age — if only in this, that I have quenched all vain desires.
No virtue, only a calculated unworldliness, a Stoic resig-
nation, a poetical skimming of the pot, a proud crushing
of vanity.

Jan. 1 1 . Last night I read two things which made an
impression, (i) An article in the Westminster Review
on the ' Dangers of Democracy,' containing the loftiest
and most heroic sentiments that I ever met with in
a political treatise : the writer says no constitutional
checks will avail, only personal influence, direct education,

P 2

212 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

indirect education. He urges the ministers of religion
to rouse themselves — he suggests that one should lecture
the working folks on the history of England, so as to
teach them how political justice is put together, &c.
This I think I will do at Windsor. He quotes what
seems to be a fine, wise book, Wilhelm von Humboldt's
Sphere of Govey^iment. I will get it.

(2) In the Contemporary Review an article by John
Conington, Professor of Latin at Oxford, on our ' Essays
on a Liberal Education.' James Wilson ^ had told me of it.
It is a very sober, candid, honest, kindly preachment. . .
Of me he says that the hght is not a ' dry light,' that
the essay is too much of an autobiography with ' cynical
self-depreciation.' . . The word ' cynical ' is much used
nowadays : it ought to mean ' shameless ' ; perhaps it is
used not incorrectly of one who makes a needless dis-
play of his own feebleness. My plea is that I have to set
forth in my own case the badness of the classical training.
But I think Conington right : I ought not to have taken
the general reader so much into my confidence : the
disposition so to act is a sort of disease. . . Apollo meets
his worshipper with the greeting 'Know thyself: and
Oxford meets me at the beginning of the year with
a similar warning— unto which I bow. . .

Eton, Jan. 16. I begin my sixty-eighth Eton cam-
paign with a pleasant day. After breakfast in came my
okl yoke-fellows Wolley and Joynes, kindly and cheerful,
to speak of our new Head Master - : there seemed to
l)e a tacit compact to start fair and co-operate. . . It is
a little victory for virtue, that he, not a great scholar nor
elocjuent preacher, should come to rule over us, being

* Archdeacon of Manchester.
' Dr. Hornby.

itioaj ESSAYS ON EDUCATION 213

the first oppidan aiul Oxford man chosen, because he
has been blameless and rational. . .

' He to his virtues g-ave his heart in guard : ' this fine
line from I\'iirfaxs Godfyey of Biillm'gjie^ read by chance
at Cambridge on my last night there, when the good
Munro and the honest brilliant Hammond were talking
over l^^iirfax and Spenser with me, seems an omen, as
it haunts me. . .

Now it is long past midnight. For my brethren's
sake I wish prosperity to this school : though my pupil-
room fail, yet the school shall beat all schools and silence
the g-ainsayer. . .

Jan. 19. To-day for the first time I got the difficult
set of boys to attend regularly well, and take notes
properly of a lecture on Church history, besides
working them up and down Acts, Corinthians and
St. Peter for references. Why did I get on better 1
Possibly because one day in the holidays the learned
and good Westcott asked me with great interest about
my Church history w^ork, of which he had heard from
Professor Lightfoot : he asked because he wished to do
the same at Harrow. To-night I read out to the first
set what Westcott recommended to me, the martyrdom
of Perpetua in the first volume of Neander, besides
working Archbishop Trench's dissertations on the
more important words in the New Testament, Shute
and Wilson taking notes, Arthur Lyttelton a good
listener.

With the twelve younger ones I read the martyrdom
of Poly carp and the beginning of the ' House of Holi-
ness ' in Faerie Queeiie. . . After evening church . . .
I went alone with the wind to talk to me : a rare high
slate-colour on the northern clouds, and treachery in the

214 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

south. I hope the wind brings the ship from Thrace, and
not too rudely. . .

Jan. 29. On Sunday I wrote a sort of valedictory
letter to Frederick Wood on leaving Cambridge, where
he took his degree the day before. These three years
and more Cambridge has been a different place to me,
for his sake : he was always ready and glad to come
to me, lunch, dine, breakfast, tea, sup, walk, drive
with me : he was my comforter when I was ill there
nearly three years ago. When he left school I gave
him all the volumes then published of the Cambridge
Shakespeare, in perfect binding : now the second half
of the book has reached him as his second leaving
book.

His face in a dozen forms is with me ; his innocent,
rich, infantine voice, unchanged for fourteen happy
years, is with me : I miss him still, though busy and
not friendless. So I wrote him one more brotherly
letter and got a beloved answer. He hopes to go to
the Mediterranean in his merry brother's ship.

These three days I have been hating stupidity, just
as I always do for the first fortnight : the boys in school
seem choked with wassail and parental insipidities.
I set them for verses to describe Poynter's picture of
Israel in Rgypt, engraved in the Illustrated News,
suggesting that they should take it allegorically, and
describe themselves as dragging under the whip the
heavy car of Paganism.

If any teacher ever reads this, let him remember not
to be too busy to scheme for shy boys that they may at
least have some younger hoys to speak to them gently
and respectfully : if nothing comes from it, the young
voice may soothe a heart that cannot utter its pain, and

t868] HINTS TO TEACHERS 215

whose pain is so forgotten by the prosperous man that
it is unrecorded in hooks. I wish King" David had
remembered his fifteenth year. Luckily St. Aug"ustine
did ; so did Isaac Wilhams.

See likewise, imao^ined teacher, the use of punctuality :
the lad who takes refuo;-e comes just before 7 p.m., and
finds me alone, just what he wants, for a minute or two
before the other boys come. This has happened four
days running-. . . Is it not well said that ag-e has for
youth a natural priesthood } . . .

Jan. 30. Thought of rest : found Warre wanting me
to walk : went with him to see his great embankment
at the bathing- place, which is to shelter the bare
bones from north wind. . . On to Dorney Common.
Endless discussion of our topics : his waves of zeal
beat upon my reefs of critical sympathy — not a bad
formula for listening, critical sympathy : I am wiser than
many men of my age in not being forward with diffi-
culties against men's schemes. Do I sincerely like their
scheming ? Harry Dupuis was good to me when I was
more crude, not more zealous, than Warre. . .

5. 1 5. Rest at last : read a new book, full of oldness —
old sacred ness, old mystery, and the romance of theology
— the poems of John Henry Newman. Into these I dipt,
as the titles led me, finding the ' Rest ' and the ' Know-
ledge ' of Lyra Apostolica — poems which had for
me the charm of something ante-natal — now disguised
by new titles and altered a little for the worse ; a poem
about David and Jonathan, another about dying at
home under the shadow of the Church (written at sea),
another about memory and the migration to the other
world ; and a simple valentine to a little girl about
martyrs and military saints, 'all of whom are Valentines,'

2i6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

and she is to have her choice. And I remember his un-
earthly voice as he read Isaiah at St. Mary's in 1 840. . .

Jan. 31. Every second of spare time I have been
reading- for my lectures :

(i) Some Adam Smith on wages.

(2) Some Wilhelm von Humboldt on Government,
protesting in 1 795 against standing armies, and govern-
ment education.

(3) Some Niebuhr's Lectures on Rome.

(4) Lives of Roman lawyers in Dictionary of Bio-
graphy.

(5) Lerminier on Montesquieu and Bacon, qiiantiiTfi
suff.

(6) Austin on Jurisprudence.

(7) Mackenzie on Roman Law.

(8) Grote's account of the Clisthenic Revolution in
Athens.

(9) Des Carrieres' History of France, looking out a
few things in Dictionary. . .

I told M. to-night that tragic heartrending story of
the two brothers who crossed and met and touched hands
in the dark, going by train across Egypt, the one to
India, the other from India, after years of separation.
No Greek, no Arab could imagine the heroic flush and
throb of such an interchange of Christian names in the
midnight. Will they in the ages to come say of us,
' Those poor Englishmen whom Newsman stirred so deeply
could not conceive our emotions .'' '

Love and part. Is it for this we are made .^ Strain
tight then, whilst you may yet embrace, poor mortals. . .

Tours, y-^//-// 8, 1868. — I am now sitting in a bedr(X)m
of Hotel de I'LInivers in a town which 1 hastily visited

ie68] AMBOISE. CIIENONCEAUX 217

eighteen years ago with tliree Cambridge men, feeh'ng
myself then a helpless stick, utterly ignorant of
French. . .

In the armchair by my side sits a lad aged seventeen \
with lightish hair and a grey coat, reading Cranford^
w\aiting till the shower passes. . . This is my com-
panion : he alw^ays spends some of his liaster holidays
with mc, as his father and mother are abroad, too far
off for the Easter holidays. . . I have been teaching
him ever since September in school class as well as
pupil room. . . He has been candid, spirited, John
Bullish in his talk ; he is attached in the wholesome
university way to his schoolfellow^s, whether they row or
read. He w^ishes to stay at Eton as long as possible. . .

At Amboise we made a treaty wath a good man who
for ten francs took us in a good carriage to Chenonceaux
and back, and then to the Chateau d'Amboise. . .
The day was as brilliant as if it were made for a prince.
The people were training their creepers, weeding their
vines, some ploughing on queer steep spots ; the country
was full of blossom, hedgeless, sheepless. We saw one
pig, no other live stock. The women looked holy in
their white head-dress, plain bodice, plain skirt, all
drest exactly alike. . . One woman begged w^hen she
saw that I pitied her humpbacked garcon who was
working with a billhook ; every one that we met touched
his hat ; perhaps to the carriage. The rye stood up a foot
high ; chestnuts were budding freely, walnuts peeping
out timidly, birches all alive ; we noticed mistletoe in the
avenues, but whether the trees were limes or Swiss
poplars we could not tell. . .

They showed us [at Chenonceaux] only the first floor

' F. Elliot.

2i8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aprh.

and the kitchen ; and if it had not been a heavenly
spring day, with a fair)' light on the water, I should
have thought it hardly so good as fame made it. I don't
care for Henri Deux and the undecaying Diane ; but it
is perhaps a paregoric to see a house in which people
have been happy and have not committed crimes. . .

We saw a swallow to-day. There were jackdaws
holding noisy dominion with the cold wind in the
terrible tall empty square tower of Loches. I saw the
little prim mouth and nose and the protruding little
eyes of Agnes Sorel, the eyes like Raffaelle's women ;
at the feet of the good lady are two curly -horned
young rams hugging each other : the two kneeling
angels who are looking into her long cheeks have too
much morbidezza for 1449.

In the chief prison was one amongst many inscriptions
on the wall, which if genuine is most striking ; the date is
1 785. The prisoner says something like this : ' We
shall soon break our chains, we shall soon throw down
these towers, and these strongholds of a king too weak
to keep them up.' The devilry of man is in Loches
if anywhere, but I will not record its base contrivances.
r>et the jackdaws scream over them.

What I like in France is peeping in at a parte cocherc
and looking at the young leaves of the shrubs in the
little front garden. I liked also a few little children
toddling hand-in-hand with the little black stolid women
who at 12.0 to-day were clattering down the street in
sabots, two and two, bearing long wisps of candle,
F sup[)ose to church. . .

An(.krs, April \o.-^^ had a short sunny trip to
Saumur ; drjcuiicd or\ :ijeji7t meal, including a dreadful
fat worm-like black thing with onions, which we loathed ;

t868] LOCHES. angers. 'GfROELET' 2rc>

it was lamprey, clearly a descendant of that lamprey
for which W^diiis Pollio sacrificed his delincjuent
slave. . .

Train to Angers - arrived at 5.30, in time for fish
dinner. Then rambled at a g-reat rate all over the
town, saw swarms of working folk released from labour
crossing the old free bridge, all merry, none quarrelsome.
Elliot said he could not help walking fast because the
evening was so fine ; and it was indeed a sky to call
back Wordsworth from Paradise. We saw the grand
old castle with its twenty engaged round towers. We
felt our way to the cathedral, which we had seen far off
lording it over the town. . .

We wandered about in Angers . . . came to the
grim castle again, and fixed the impression. The counter-
scarp, though almost perpendicular, was starred with
wallflowers ; this gtrq/Ie^ has been the ministering
spirit of this tour. It is in northern France the April
flower seemingly. We never saw a primrose, nor
a larch, nor a hurdle, nor a cow grazing — only one pig
and two geese — and Elliot wondered where all the eggs
and milk came from. Wallflower and mistletoe, birch and
poplar, make up the general impressions. We asked
our way to the Jardin Botanique ... a delightful place,
with steep dips and luxuriant wildernesses of shrubs — •
a small straight deep -sunk ditch with two blazes of marsh
marigold (of which the working men that I questioned
could not tell me the common name). . .

A gleam of sun came for a few minutes to do honour
to the Botanic Garden, which was in such a sheltered dip
as to save us from the extreme chilliness of the weather;
but there came also a thundercloud and drove us to
our handsome hotel, passing pyramids of potatoes and

220 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

scores of market carts in the great open slope below the
hotel, where are the capabilities of Angers, one of the
best towns I ever saw, for situation, variety, and pros-
perity. . .

I left off at Chartres. We went to church with the
Papists. I had a British Prayer Book. Entered by the
famous and well-remembered North Transept Gate, a
triple cavern peopled with big Saints. We stood meekly
watching the procession : there were stout choristers in
red and stout ones in black, with short surplices ; there
were officials with embroideries stiff and flat on their
backs, like the ' sandwich ' men who carry placards on
their fronts and backs at a Marylebone election ; there
was a yellow bishop whose mitre looked uncanny, yet
somewhat poetical : as they swung round a corner from
south aisle to main nave going eastward, they were
slovenly and even rollicking: Elliot judged them severely
from the drill point of view ; I compared them unfor-
tunately with the sublime purity and slow stateliness of
our white-surpliced choristers singing at midnight with
torches, ' I am the Resurrection and the Life,' coiling
round the Lifeguardsmen with their cuirasses flashing
back the tall wax candles they held, in 1837, when
Wilham the King was buried in St. George's. Even in
their own line we beat the Papists.

I have seen the beloved Abbey since I was at Chartres :
it is to the great P>ench church as a peregrine falcon to
a kite.

Fine as Chartres is, there is nothing to read in it :
where there should be monuments there are altars,
needless and tautologous. No doubt there are inex-
haustible mines of iconography in the windows, but they
are out of sight to any one but a student ; there are

iB68] CHARTRES AND WESTMINSTER 221

forests of sculpture, but all old worn-out subjects. Far
rather would I see our frieze with the life of lulward tlie
Confessor, our relief representing- Andre going- to his
death and Washington refusing to yield to the entreaties
of the English flag-bearer. In France you get your
flood of hagiology in one place, where no one heeds
it but the archaeologist, and your torrent of history in
another place, Versailles, where the patient public is
driven like a flock of sheep. At the sublime shrine
of England we have Christianit)^ in the fairest form,
blended with the glowing patriotism of our heroic cen-
turies and the mournfulness of mothers robbed long- ago
by some fever of their Westminster scholars, young
Morgans and Mansels and Cholmondeleys : ' You might
know that he was of the ancient stock of the Chol-
mondeleys,' says the Latin of 1680; and within sound
of our intelligible psalmistry is the proud lament for
the Lord Aubrey Beauclerk who commanded H. M. S.
PriJtce Frederick at Carthagena, and had both legs
shot off, and would not give up his breath till he
had told his first lieutenant how to fio^ht it out aoainst
the Spanish forts. And after the anthem is forgotten,
I listen affectionately to the country cousins and the ugly
London artizans reading to one another the records of
Englishmen ' who behaved themselves with honour and
applause.' . .

The yellow bishop read on for ten minutes at a time
quite inaudibly, whilst people were scrambling in, children
fidgeting in their seats, a virago lifting out chairs to sell
them elsewhere, men making gaps in chair-lines for
their wives to squeeze through, other men talking aloud ;
no order, no kneeling, no devout standing, no visible
sympathy — in the midst of it, two roughs with hats on

222 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

hurrying- up the only passage in the nave with an empty
sedan chair.

If our prelates would but abolish the Venite, Magnificat,
and Nunc Dimittis, or add a great variety of things like
introits as substitutes for them ; if they would insist on
minor canons being dismissed who talk (as a man said
on Tuesday in disgust) as if they had pins in their
mouths ; if there were more antiphonal prayers or litanies ;
if solo- singing of men were forbidden; our St. George's
and Westminster would prevail over all the glories of
Rome and Milan and Northern France.

We saw after service the famous black image, drest,
however, that day in glittering garments, surrounded
with kneeling worshippers and lighted tapers. . .

On the west, instead of clearing out and giving one
a chance of looking freely at the splendidly beautiful
north-west tower, they are re-building and choking up
the space : there is no tree, no turf, near the cathedral.
One remembers Canterbury, Lichfield, Ely, Exeter, Wells,
and one envies not the French church.

We wandered all over the town, getting down to the
little Eure, which might be called ' Sewer,' where there
are the smallest ix)ssible d/anchissertes,

' The grace of God in this is seen
That dirty water doth make clean.'

The unworthiness of the river hindereth not the
washing of the linen. But I had rather not have my
shirts entrusted to the laundresses of Chartres.

That was a grey austere wintry Easter day. I shall
forget it: I shall remember the Tuesday, and the return
to my worshipful and poetical country, the tomb of
Newton ^' Let mortils congratulate themselves because
there has been so great an ornament of the human race ') ;

i868] STREETS OF LONDON. WALTER SCOTT 223

the sun behind our palace of law-g"Ivcrs, and the coal-
bar^e with one pair of black oars gliding with the tide
under Westminster I^rldge ; and the swarms of happy
children playing in vSt. James's Park, in the fairest of all
city landscapes.

It is worth while to go to France that one may rejoice
in the braver and more generous people of England.
The very meanness and ugliness of so many streets in
London I half like. They built well when they were at
peace in Elizabeth's days and George I's days: they
built shabbily when they were paying for all the armies
which resisted Bonaparte and made us the leading and
the knight-errant nation. Our unselfish wars have left
their mark on London in miles of featureless street : but
no matter ; give us fifty more years of peace, and we will
have a city worthy of our perfect Thames, whose breadth
and curves are all the eye desires. . .

King's College, Cambridge, ^/r?/ 26.— In London
three days. A morning at the Portrait Exhibition,
where I made friends with Charlotte Bronte, Sir William
Napier, Sir Walter Scott, Castlereagh, Wellington,
St. Vincent, and others. . . Walter Scott, shrewd yet
wistful, boyish yet dry, looking as if he would ask and
answer questions of the fairies — him I saw through
a mist of weeping. He is my lost childhood, he is
my first great friend. I long for him, and hate the death
that parts us. . .

There is a peculiar charm about this place now.
I am sitting with every window open. Eastwards lies
the town, but it makes no noise, though it is half-
past nine ; westwards I have a broad expanse of the
best turf, and a little strip of water and tall trees
pointing to the country ; a remarkable stillness and

224 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

brightness for a town residence. In a few minutes there
will be two tall lads here with their teeth unsheathed and
their tongues flashing. One of them has planetary eyes
and a complete, full, eloquent utterance. I urge him to
be an orator, though he is of a Tory house : his father
was my schoolmate : . . this lad has a visible soul. . .

April 2'^. . . To please young men is a greater honour
than what Horace piqued himself upon, ' pleasing eminent
citizens.' But Horace pleased no less his free-hearted
Lollius and his ingenuous Scaeva, and gave them the
benefit of his twenty years start in life. . .

In the midst of our long evening I went (by request)
to see F. on his sick bed ; he thinks he w^ould like to
come and work at Eton in July as a lodger : quite right.
May they prosper that love our Jerusalem. . .

Midriight. I found C. Everard and stopt to talk, . .
then we heard a nightingale, and we w^alked to the river
to get nearer him — moonlight — soft breeze ; . . we had
many a turn round the lawn, with no sound but our own
voices and bird and wind, and we talked not gossip nor
opinions, but odds and ends ; he was merry and I not
sad. I Hke him better than the sages.

Plato thought the earth revolved on its axis. Aristotle
says, ' those who give, love more than those who receive
kindnesses.' The wise men of Trinity College do not
know how to praise, so they lack the Jindi)i(^ of live
minds, and it is a poor substitute for this to go on
picking dead men's bones.

Eton, May 2. I am not well ; in bed yesterday. . .
But I take up the Journal, with hardly a pen to use,
just to record that the human race has been kind to
me: and these are my thanks.

1868] EDIVARD IRVING'S JOURNAL 225

I had no voice to q^rect the boys, but the little ones
were unusually considerate, and spoke and moved softly.
Thackeray came and talked very friendly ; Wayte took
some trouble for me, and was very agreeable; Warre
came and cheered me when at a bad pinch ; Marindin
wrote to offer help ; Luxmoore sent a verbal offer ;
S. sent flowers ; B. played Cujus am'main. . .

May 3, I p.m. I am reading the most sublime thing
in literature, Edward Irving s Journal, window open, sun
burning, a cock crowing on the other side of the street ;
and to my surprise and delight Jeff, my Virginian
nightingale, began to sing. He has been here a fort-
night, mute all but a little chirp like a feeble cricket :
now he has got over his fears: he has seen me sitting
still for hours : he was provoked to a noble rivalry by
that vulgar rooster. Perhaps it was the first time he
heard cockcrow since he left Virginia. I took him from
a small dark street between Covent Garden and Regent
Street: perhaps he is enlivened by the sun, perhaps
by the sugar that I gave him. It was a pretty, cheerful
incident : the more valuable, I dare say, because I am
not well. He is hushed again, but he is sure not to
relapse altogether. . .

I can trust my own judgement better to-day than
I could yesterday : so I have been casting horoscopes
with the usual audacity, that is to say, writing about
boys and interfering with a family. Wholly its own
fault.

What a puddle my life is, what an ocean was Irving's
life.

May 10. I have this last week in spite of illness
begun, and begun forcibly, teaching my youngest boys
the elements of science. I began thus : ' What do you

Q

226 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

mean by distilled water ? ' This took perhaps three
minutes. ' What is a cube ? a cubic foot ? ' ' Dimen-
sions.' ' Why not four dimensions } Height and depth
make one dimension.' ' Specific gravity.' ' Standard of
specific gravity.' ' Measure, weight, talent, raXavrov^ arm,
ell,' Henry I's arm. (Here we got upon Henry I, whom
we had done two days before in talking Annals of
England^ when I began with Edgar Atheling and got
down to Henry Fitzempress with an account of my
visit to Fontevrault.) 'Troy weight — why so called.'.
' Weighing money. Stamping. Coining.' I finally ascer-
tained that all five boys could read decimals. This lesson
took less than half an hour ; yet I was as hoarse as
a raven.

Friday evening I had all the older ones, not less than
ten of them. We read in Cazin's Chaleitr a short chapter
giving the history of the thermometer. . .

The objection to this teaching is that I can say what
I like, the lads are so much at my mercy ; I did it pretty
well, and their pens scratched. . .

After lecture themes — hard jobs — till 10.40. Virgil
construing with Fifth Form. 11. Virgil in school — a
beautiful passage, refreshing. They take away Virgil
next week — it is taking the priest out of the
temple. . .

8. Lecture on Roman Law to a listless vSet of elder
pupils; they hate It: I can't help It; I made some of
them learn something. . .

May 14, 8 9.15 p.m. In pupil-room was spread the
feast of reason. I had to lay things, blotting-paper, &:c.

Came the gentle clcverlsh A., the gentle stupid R.,
the great deaf sound-minded C, the intelligent D., my
friend 1^^., and F. . . whom I used to like and encourage, . .

i868] SCIENCE AND FRENCH LESSONS 227

and with these were sundry tame scamps not worth
nam 1 no-.

1 had chosen a l)a^e of Ji^mil Souvestre s Souvenirs
d'un BaS'Bre/on^ a book long- ago recommended by
Captain AVilson ^ I read a few words, they wrote ; thus
we got through twenty bits of conversation, including"
every participle and pronoun that needs special atten-
tion. When they had finished wTiting I called up one to
read what he had written and spell it to me ; thus we
spelt every word, noted every accent and apostrophe.
B}' this time the hour was nearly gone ; Frank Tarver
came in by appointment, and read the page out to them,
whilst I stopt him several times to make them attend
to the pronunciation w^here I had missed \\\& finesse of
it ; he went in three or four minutes, then I translated it
to them. This was a solid, minute lesson, not babyish.
As soon as they were gone I met in the inner room six
of my little pupils, and w^e talked leisurely, without any
excitement or emulation, of English kings, of emperors,
and Templars. . .

Friday^ May 15, 7 p.m. — Dictation — seven good lines
of Aeschylus, twenty or thirty of Cicero, a good legal
and ethical bit from De Fmibus — three-quarters of an
hour doing it and explaining; very solid work, half an
hour talking to the boys about their mistakes in this
and in theme — my old ones did theme much better than
the new^ ones. . .

3 p.m. Confusion about lessons — great heat. . . I silenced
all discussions as to what the lesson was, by announcing-
a lecture on the bit of Livy which they had to translate
last week ; and for thirty-five minutes I gave them as

^ Admiral Wilson, father of Sir Roland Wilson, Bart.

Q 2

228 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

much Latin syntax as any man can give in the time, and
in spite of the heat they listened. But I was half ill.

Monday, May 17. It will be a dull world where there
is no weeping.

How am I to get through this week? If anything
would help me it would be the tunes, such as Cujus
anifnatn. . .

Friday, May 22. One of my worst days this w^eek
I was strolling in the playing-fields, and a child ran up
to give me a hand ; a surprise. It was my true friend
Dora, wholesome, cool, white, and courageous.

My photographs of statesmen, soldiers, and poets
have come. Wordsworth is gone back in disgrace, so is
Faraday ; Walter Scott, twice over, is small and muggy.
Pitt, John Moore, Dalhousie, Havelock, Outram, Col-
borne, and many more are bad, but Castlereagh will
do. Wm. Napier is magnificent, Durham, Melbourne,
Macaulay, Fowell Buxton are good and welcome. . .

I get on well in German. I have had some tunes
beating on the mind as the waves beat. Life in a haze,
but luminous still. . .

May 23. — 3 p.m. Expounding Tacitus and Roman
history to three dozen beery, sleepy, ignorant lads . . .
forty minutes of Pharaoh in the sands, drag, drag. . .

5.10 p.m. Desks cleared for action — 8 students.
They found their MwSS. ready for them, with marks
and corrections, and a fresh discourse, delivered with-
out a hitch and completed exactly at the right time.
I was in my big chair for rest, but to my delight
I found new matters rising to the mind and tongue, and
enriching what I had prepared ; and I daresay I liked
my innings as well as Gladstone liked his coincident
and equally timed speech on the Irish Church. . .

i868] CIIR. ROSSETTI. 'SPANISH GYPSY' 229

Swiday, May 24, 12.45 p.m. — I read a dull Martyr-
dom to rioht small hoys. 2. I talked about butterfly life,
i.e. frivolity, to nine boys; then we read Kcclesiastes for
some time, to their great relief, I think. Then I took
up Christina Rossetti and read, with my recovered voice,
and with my best skill, the Royal Princess, Lady Maggie,
and the Milkjiiaid — excellent true poetry. . .

May 25. To-day I had three stout, loud, emphatic,
fierce lectures, using- my voice as a horse-drench or
syringe. In the intervals my little pupils have been
good, lively, and w^illing; they are certainly a needful
accompaniment. . .

May 26. I did Stephen's reign with Fourth Form,
showing them architectural scraps and explaining Nor-
man and Gothic, &c. ; they were tranquil and moderately
intelligent. . . I shall have to take them all out for an
expedition soon, they are so good. . .

June 3. Since I was at this book I have read a book
through — George Eliot's poem, Spanish Gypsy. High
mental treat — yet no strong feeling stirred. She spoils
the effect by a compromise between narrative and drama,
sometimes giving mere stage directions spun out, at
other times writing long bits of narrative. It is on the
whole a failure as a drama. I have no sympathy with the
hero when he goes over to the gypsies for the sake of
his sweetheart . . . yet the rhythm is delightful, the senti-
ments marvellously elevated ; there is that psycholatry
in it which is characteristic of the writer.

' To the sentinel
The hour is regal when he takes his post.'

* To die in vain — the noblest thing.'

'The saints should have thrown themselves on the Roman swords
when their Lord was led to the cross.'

230 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

These things will stick to me. Would it make a good
Opera ? . .

Jtine 4. What a pity to miss my recollections of
June 2, which, however, I so fully wTOte out in two letters
that they are not likely to be lost utterly. Seldom have
I had such high pleasure in watching the happy friend-
ship of others and in sharing it after my fashion. Nature
did her best to set the little human hearts in her
jewellery. . .

Sandrock Hotel, Niton, Isle of Wight, /?^/v 19,
1868. — Eight hours' journey had not made me feel that
I was only just rallying from illness. I walked in the old
way, prying and feebly wondering at things that other
people would take in at a glance — such as a perfectly
dark little path quite overhung with leaves, and holding
a little gurgling rivulet that disappeared under the road. . .
My road ended at a gate, and seemed likely to be farmish
and doggish, so I talked to a big man, perhaps the
farmer, about crops and stock, ascertaining that I might
go through his farm to the sea, then close by. Here
I rejoiced in the yellowness of the corn, for near Eton it
is perfectly white like the blasted firs of Rothie Murchus.
In a minute I was on a little bit of clean down with
a puckered furze brake on the north-west, on my right
and behind me, tumbling up to the hill edge which was
set with half a dozen fantastic rocks : and in that evening
light, near eight, I could see the starved cattle skirmish-
ing up the heights almost up to the protruding rocklets ;
and in front was the smallest of beaches, just red shingle
in patches no bigger than chairs and tables, with white
pebbles and lumps big enough to sit upon, and in the
waves, which were coming to me softly, were bigger

1868] LONELINESS. THE M'JLL OF GOD 231

square lumps, hi*^ cnouLrh each for a pair of tide-bound
lovers. And above the sea a strip of yellow li^ht, and
above that a bar of blue cloud (|uickly disappearing- from
the headland, to which when I came it hung on, and
the glow stronger near the land, the sun himself out of
sight. The old smell of sea-weed, one female figure
within range of my glasses stooping often to gather
something. What were my thoughts .-*

Little more at first than this. ' They nearly did me
out of this by telling me I should find this south side
of the island unbearably hot ; and I am rewarded for
obeying my doctor.' Then a simple line of Horace's
occurred to me, ' But that thou art not here all else is joy.'
Whom did I wish to be there } Was it the little girl in
the train, bony and aged thirteen or so, who was so
spirited and so fond of the tall serene Arthur, and so
different from the languishing lady who threatened to
faint at Basingstoke, and to whose threats Arthur was so
politely indifferent ? Or did I regret being a lone man }
If I had married, as other people do, by this time my
wife w^ould be pursy, short of breath, addicted to sal
volatile, unable to sing, begrimed with frugality, bent on
making me write letters to people whose sons have been
my pupils, to make interest for her nephews, cousins, or
pet clergy ; fretting at my want of progress and my
patient submission to all the defeats inflicted on me by
younger men, feeling with cruel pain all that I feel with
a mild sentimental twinge, and worse than all, drenching-
me with aphorisms about the Will of God, of which she
would be sure to think she knew as much as if she had
been admitted to His counsels. . .

The Will of God — how can I tell w^hat it is } I only
^a^e it. I take it in bed with fever on me. . . I take

232 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

it with an even mind when breeze and caressing-
wave welcome me, and the sky cuts itself into my
beloved bars without a skit of feathery white or a petal
of pink, when it seems easy to own myself part of the
blind, heedless creation, when my will is not in abeyance,
but just active enough to give me the pleasure of
consent. . . It is very hard to know one's own mind.
I am not at all sure that I wished for a companion at
all. Do I now ? Yes, but not at the price of an
indissoluble bond, nor at the price of another innocent
person's happiness or freedom.

It w^as the blueness of the sea, as seen when one got
over the edge of the high land and came to this southern
slope, that surprised me. Somehow the sea I have seen
lately has not been blue enough, and I feared it never
would be again. When the pleasing of the eye was a
very rare thing with me, in my vile boyhood, there was
one annual apotheosis of nature when we went to
Clovelly, and the first combe opened V- shape, letting
the blue sea into the retreating angle ; but when the
foreground is yellow corn, sloping from under me,
then I am on a level with Ruskin and Tennyson. . .

'The happiest of summer halves.' Never mind health.
I have been more active in mind, wasted less time over
stupid useless vexing lessons, struggling more effectually
with stupid idle unpunctual boys ; more successful in
regaining my pupils from barbarism, particularly B.,
F., G. ; more happy in making up on Sundays the little
quarrels of the week with children such as P., V., L. ;
more fluent in discourse, more able to hold listeners ;
more at ease with my friends, and masters, who have
been more friendly than ever, more entertained and less
bored by visitors ; keeping almost all tiresome parents

i8o8] RECORD OF THE SUMMER 233

at arm's Icng-th, and receiving- as guests some of the
most admirable ot" old luonians. I wish to remember
my day on the river, St. Barnabas, with Montagu
Butler, . . . my wonderful poetical evening at Marlovv
and Harleyford, moonlight and reflected Venus, . . .
my fourteen mile walk with F. Wood across the Park
on a Sunday evening, my moonlight strolls with him
in the playing-fields, my day at Harrow, my two
days at Frogmore, my singing-party under the Anker-
wyke chestnut; my little tea-party at the Mousetraps
and the final musical entertainment of July 17, just
before I came away. . .

I have not been to play, concert, or dinner-party, nor
to any exhibition, but I have sent other people to operas.
I have seen more of the green woods, partly thanks to
Ainger and Luxmoore, less of the river banks. I have
picked one loosestrife. I have spent a great deal of
money in eating and drinking : innumerable little
suppers and breakfasts, not one of which has not been
really enjoyed by young people with good appetites.
I have seen romantic, chivalrous friendships forming
under my eye, to which I am almost admitted as a
partner. . , I have learnt a little German and a little
Political Economy, and read two books which gave me
a lift — Kinglakes Crimea and The Spanish Gypsy.
But reading gets less and less satisfactory as I get older.
As my Mother used to say, ' It is idle work.'

I have read this week, July 18-24, Pearson's History
of England^ which is instructive and wholesome, though
Saturday Reviewish. I fancy it must have been very
pleasant to be a baron in Henry Ill's reign. There was
plenty of room in England to move about, and no

^ His lodging at No. 2, High Street, Eton.

234 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

overwhelming- insecurity ; and to see the pointed arches
rising in their virgin boldness must have been the
quintessence of poetry.

' Hand and Sceptre,' Southborough, Tonbridge.
Be forgotten, Niton, Bonchurch, Shanklin, with all your
choky walls and stagnant seas, but I will remember
Ryde, for there the wind did his duty, almost tempting
me to stay, and Solent had a joy tempered and not
in-solent\ Hundreds of little boats nodded to me to
ask me to go out for a sail. I sat in the bows and
went proudly to the big Spithead ships, bursting with
the news that I had got of our double victory at Wim-
bledon ^. , .

July 23. Dreams are, it is true, incommunicable,
because when you try to communicate them they be-
come too rational to be like themselves ; but are not
theopathic impressions, and all that the believers call ' real,'
no less incommunicable } I wish 1 could dream of the
picture I saw years ago of Kynance Cove ; of the sight
I had in 1853 of the snowy Alps from the ferry on the
Ticino at Sesto Calende ; of the Exeter lady with fair
hair sitting in a darkened room, whom I saw in 1842 —
dead long since ; of Milan Cathedral ; of the Hamoaze
at sunrise, as I saw it in August, 1850; of Killarney as
it looked to me coming back from KenmcU-e ; of the
dolphins under the bows of my ship in the Aegean,
racing each other and making intersecting curves of
diamond light in tlie shadow of the prow before the
moon set ; of the Westminster boat-race at Staines in
i<S36 ; of the Fusilier Guards going to the Russian war ;

' Floracc, Odts II. 3. 3

* The Public Schoolii Challenge Shield and the Spencer Cup.

1868] DREAMS. ELECTION SATURDAY 235

of my first sii^ht of the Venice Piazza in 1853 ; of W.J. 's
soft laii<^Iiter, and M. (}.'s dresses. . .

Mouse Trap,////v 24, 10 p.m. — A cool nig-ht, window
open thoiicrh ; my pink has blown since I went away.
I have just been out, after writinjr my letters, to ask
news of Stone and Ainger. Found them out. No news
then to sleep upon. No certainty of seeing any one in
the morning. Rather like Christina's poem, ' When I am
dead.' Loyal je seraz\ says somebody. . .

What a comfort to find no quarrel or scolding on the
table after a week's absence. . .

Election Saturday, July 2^. I went at 8.15 in the
glow of sunset up the river to meet the boats coming
down. I met swarms and lines of boys coming down.
For the most part I escaped them by keeping to the
right, favoured by the twilight, but some of them saw
me : however I went on like a ghost, silent, looking at
no one, bent only on keeping my freedom, my right to
go against the stream, my right to see the pretty sight
of the long boats and their curtseying flags come out
of locks in the light that suits my eyes ; all the vul-
garity of their singing did not kill the beauty of their
movements. The band — a vile band — played the old
4th of June tune which Scott Holland used to like.
There was a half moon on the right, queening it in spite
of rowdies ; and I saw a dear form in a light blue coat
standing up to take the Henley crew through the crowd
of inferior boats. I stood alone, watching, listening, re-
hearsing the part of a discharged usher. They got clear
of each other, and with my glasses I followed their
curves of movement far down the dear river. I thought
of young men quartered in India hill-forts, droning in

236 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

twos or singly through a steaming night, miserably
remembering their last row at Eton, pining and craving
for lost youthfulness. I, all the while, know^ that I am
as youthful in feeling and in enjoying as the noisy lads
in these boats. Presently I was in absolute solitude,
sitting on a well-known stile, watching the rockets cross
the breadth of South Meadow and Brocas. Now and
then a fixed firew^ork blazed up so as to show what
I knew to be a mass of people looking on from the
bank, and their cheers were transfigured into pure joy
at that distance. Clewer Tower in the background ;
behind a spiritual after-glow ; on my right lady moon ;
wind up stream, letting the little meteors fall slowly,
well above the crowd.

I was home in time for my first guest, Alfred Lyttelton.
Then they came, one by one, all sober, friendly, quietly
cheerful. In good time I got them seated, three in the
cabin, twelve in the pupil room, with Elliot in his
Victorious ^ dress, helping them to raised pie. Davis
my Gyp, and I, did the waiting. Then I got them off to
bed in ones and twos. I think, indeed I know, that all
were well feasted and gratified. . . Wolley Dod, my old
colleague's son, was near me, sociable and able to talk.
Indeed, very few were so absorbed in victuals as not
to talk fluently. And the best of having the feast on
Election Saturday is that there is sure to be something
to talk of No dissipation, nothing spilt, nothing broken.
The whole thing took place in an hour. . .

Sunday, July 26. In desk at 3 p.m. Hateful service.
A steaming crowd, a most lugubrious, wearisome
anthem. When will this absurd sort of worship come

' The Eton Eight won the Ladies' Plate at Henley this year, F. (Elliot)
steering. He was steering the yictory on Election Saturday.

i868] ELECTION SATURDAY. CONISTON 237

to an end ; this holocaust, this human Incense, this
Moloch-squeezing of innocents ? . .

Wcd)icsday I wrote reports of my division whilst
they were doincr their papers, and I had much talk, not
very cheerful, with my poor mournful ^uest, who was
to go for good next day. It was for him a day of
burning sympathy. He had been exploring, and with
his divining-rod drawing out the griefs of a timid,
disappointed, heart-bruised lad, who told him how he
liked boys who did not like him — no one liked him.
M. did all he could for him, and not altogether without
success. He tried, how^ever. In vain to get him the
messmate that he longed for. . .

I have given a pretty copy of Thomas a Keiitpis to
my beloved Arthur Lyttelton, cured in a great measure
of unpunctuality. . .

CONISTON, Saturday inorning, Aug. i. — After break-
fast we trotted on by Carnforth and Ulverston to Fur-
ness, and there basked on the turf. Our run at six to
Coniston was delightful, improving every mile, with more
rock, more broom, more grass, here and there a good bit
of sea. . . I suppose our Sunday there [Coniston] was
a day of as much rest as one could get. I was reading
Earthly Paradise^ a singularly primitive, unaffected
story, which gave me no head-work and very little heart-
ache. We wandered round the lake, till we found a path
through a field leading to a convenient slope, and lay
there long enough to watch the changes in the hills made
by the light killing the haze. We sat and lay in the
garden to escape the. heat. We took the boat and went
sofdy down the lake, one pair of sculls at work, reached
the nice little Lake-bank Inn at sunset, and had a good
cheap meat-tea. Then back slowly by moonlight, the

238 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

sweetest of voyages, getting in before midnight, welcomed
by a kind waitress, who said they had been more than
once down the bank to look for us.

To Rev. C. W. Fiirse.

Grasmere, August i^, 1868.

If the journals interest you, there is a drawer full at
Eton, and some more volumes scattered about England.

I often write at considerable length, leaving out all
sordid and vexatious things. I wish I had written more
at school ; as it is there are records of a whole fortnight
and of a month (last May) which may some day be
valued as data for an account of Eton life. In another
way I sometimes think my journals will be valuable,
they will contain some careful studies of people whose
biographies will be written, if not published.

To write rapidly is a great pleasure, like skating; it
is a pity I don't do it more. . . But this is not the way
in which our philosophers made things that last ; and
I had rather write at the level official style, say like
Northcote or Cardwell, on topics of real pressing im-
portance, than skim like a De Quincey.

The other day I had to write a circular about getting
our side lanes at Eton visited by the water-cart ; and
I liked doing this better than anything. On Election
Saturday I sat in and wrote an answer to an appeal
against our College votes touching Eton Scholarships:
this again was enjoyable, because it was of the nature
of business.

Then again 1 i)ut my whole strength into some reports
of boys, as last week, when writing about Arthur

i868] USE OF JOURNALS. GRASMERE 239

Lyttelton. These thinp^s are actions, not mere words, as
Thucydides says.

When I was ill 1 was corresponding with a lad who
was away from school for bad eyes: this again was
work of some sort, and pleasure too. Writing books is
generally a bit of vanity.

Journal. Grasmere, Aug. 5. — Proposed to call it
Gasmere. Gas is king even here. They put him close
to this hostelry, and he poisons my bedroom. I have
just done breakfast : I sit in a recess of the good public
room. . . The garden is edged with boats, available late
and early, and the lake is under a spell of weather such
as Wordsworth can seldom have known : the calm of
Peel Castle, of the Venus Sonnet, of the Abraham's
Bosom Sonnet. Last night we went about in a heavy
boat, cushioned and high-backed like a family pew. The
moon rose over a low hill fringed w^th firs, but hardly
came out in full force, as she had on Sunday. We wan-
dered round the island, poring over every shoal, peering
into every little dimple, listening for strange sounds,
hearing only a scream, perhaps an owl's, and a whirry
fluffy squattering of wild duck ; talking of the reasons
for living at Eton, of the incomparable breeding of our
boys, of the true studies of their characters which we can
make ; of sundry little bits of grace and virtue actually
noticed. . .

We drink gallons of tea to keep up against the heat :
never were there three such tea-drinkers. We do not
smoke ; we talk plainly about theories of Providence and
the like, without wrangling or mutual torture ; we talk
poetr)', and quote the ancients in a spirit of travesty like

240 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

Trevelyan. We say things that raise laughter not worth
recording. . .

Here are three ages of man counter-changed and
rainbowed. . .

In this peaceful, half- mourning poising of the mind,
I can hover over the remembrance of ten days. . .

BoRROWDALE, Wednesday ^ Aug. 6. — The first evening
we walked up the valley a good way and looking leftwards
up the narrow glen that seems to point to Langdale,
we saw broad ' nappes ' of light, two of them, thrown
bounteously on steep green grey slopes, with a grace
far beyond the reach of art, but not quite beyond the
grasp of loyal memory. We halted at a bridge, and I, by
long importunities and display of a coin, beguiled first
a little girl leading a little brother in a check gabardine,
which made him like Holman Hunts Holy Child, and
then a second group of one biggish girl and two little
things. Conversation was languid, but I saw their good
figures and complexion. The sixpence was thrown, and
the spirited girl got it. . .

Saturday. It was a long pleasant descent to the out-
skirts of Keswick, and we were home before eight.
A splendid day's — not work, but — breathing and gazing ;
let us say living. The goodness of the horses, their easy
trotting with a light carriage, helped greatly to the enjoy-
ment of things. Plenty of walking, for the hills turned
us out freciuently ; no heat or dust ; the easiest talk and
the simplest listening ; a myriad tunes whistled, little
observations of girl and dog, of a caterpillar high up on
an oak, which our entomologist could reach only by
climbing up my back ; of ragged Robin in the hedge,
just one scrap of it; little recollections of Wordsworth,
perhaps prompted by the guide-book. For his sake

1868] GRASMERE. KESWICK 241

I was Inclined to call the ragg"ecl Robin campion. Per-
haps this perfect country mii^ht have enircndered a better
poet ; but we owe him much. . .

Sunday, Aug. 9. At ni<rht I read Stapylton's anno-
tated Eton Hsts, 1856. The first sixty boys included the
remnant of my famous division which I had in 1851, and
in these sixty there were eighteen who took first-class
degrees at Oxford and Cambridge ; but there were other
pages that gave me an ache — names that presented no
associations, poor obscure things, whom one might have
helped a little ; and it is piteous to see the humble records
that correspond so poorly with young aspirations, 'settled
in a town,' ' Lieutenant of Warwickshire Militia,' ' in busi-
ness in London,' 'barrister : ' this is a very common entry :
yet I could see only two names of men who are doing
well in law, both pupils of mine, both graceful versifiers.

Mo7tday, Aug. 10. On our way home we had an
edge of fiery sunset glow over the heights on our left,
and on the right just over the other hill was a fragment
of rainbow. We found it a long walk, and though we
wasted no time we were not back till past nine, five
hours' steady foot- work — not bad for me. And at tea
we were all alive. . .

Patterdale, Wednesday, Aug. 12. — What a series
of jokes and laughs w^e had yesterday ! This morning
we have been planning, studying Bradshaw, suffering
pangs of irresolution — two of us, not I. . . Last night,
when I came in, I read Huxley's Physiology. . . To-day
I have been reading a well-written dissertation on Plato's
dialectic. He knew nothing of verification ; his concep-
tion of ' nature ' is totally different from the modern one.
I was amused with Plato's ' dichotomy,' giving by many
stages a limiting definition of weaving.

R

242 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

I have been reading- again that singular life of Sir
William Napier. He says the Duke of Wellington
had a great mind, not a great heart. . . He is noble
when he speaks up for the common people for the sake
of the big Irishman Eccles, who showed his gratitude for
being let off flogging by sheltering Napier from fire as
they raced up to the rocks on the Nivelle. Let me
remember too how Napier grieved for young O'Connell,
whom he persuaded to volunteer with himself for
St. Sebastian, and so sent to death. The lad w^as to be
promoted if he came back. His mother was maintained
by him out of his pay. And the lad, Edward Freer,
coming just before the fight to take shelter under Napier's
cloak and tell him with sobs that he knew he was to be
killed and bring sorrow to mother and sister.

Wednesday, Aug. 19. After leaving Sweetheart
Abbey we walked, past a little mill stream, up a lane,
across a cornfield, up a queer little sunken brook-side
path, tangled with old dead roots, rich in broom and
hazel, gemmed with rare ferns ; across the brook, till
then half hidden, on to a gentle brae, where the lighter
heath (not ling, I think) grew in big masses like low
furze, and smelt of honey under that strong sun almost
too much ; over a wall, on to the real hill side. My
companions saw clearly, I dimly, from the top of Criffel
the northern side of Skiddaw. . . They lamented, and
I did not, that Solway was not at high tide : I liked the
streaks. I wished we could have remained up there in
the cool air till sunset, when I should have seen more
of the Redgauntlet waters, and there would have been
a better colouring. As it was, our descent was pleasant,
as the flanking out-works looked singularly well, and
there were little lacings of distant water, lochs of Dum-

i868] SIR IVILLIAM NAPIER. LOCH RYAN 243

fries th.'it I had never heard of. The ground threw up
rabbits and irrouse, the heath vv.'is worthy of Hymettus.
Let me in charity forcrct the flies, our only enemies.

Drivin<r home, throu<rh the sunset, we said nothing-, but
tunes came to the surface, with images of Lanercost and
Sweetheart and gentle womanhood, and a little com-
passion for the harvesting people who were passed on
the road, bent some of them, and going to no supper. . .

Stranraer^ Ttcesday. — A wet and disappointing
journey of eighty miles by rail brought us hither. This is
a new- looking place, but it has some old thatched hovels.
In the litde harbour were only five or six little colliers, of
about forty tons burden : rusty grass -grown rails on the
pier, scores of people catching sand-eels with their hands.
Loch Ryan, which I choose to think is Loch Royan from
which sailed forth Fair Annie ^ the forsaken lady, looked
dull and grey, with a brisk gale blowing down the throat.
But by good luck first one boat and then another set
sail and put out of harbour, tacking boldly in beating
up, seeming to us wondrously courageous, poppling up
and down, and amusing us for half an hour, whilst we
took in sea fragrance and appetite. . .

After luncheon we were reduced from three to two.
Once more I had a mutely pathetic parting with a com-
panion who suits me singularly well.

Lawers, Crieff, Attg. 28.. — Eighteen hours' journey,
of which three were spent at Stirling. The moon failed
me where I wished for her, at the back of Hawes Water,
and in darkness we swept by the scenes of toil and of gay
Cambridge chattering ; and when the sun was up, all was
prose. I took one more taste of poetry in Westminster
Abbey, where the vulgar Britons go in and out softly ;

* lontca, ' A poor French sailor's Scottish sweetheart.'

R 2

244 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

reverencing- the beautiful dark roof; and St. Jude's pious
railing- sounded like parlour thunder, and Farrant's well-
worn anthem, doing duty in the absence of the organ,
was our scanty reward for listening to a long feeble
discourse on St. Paul's death-rapture, that theme which
bears no modulations.

I took my usual walk in St. James's Park, but with
the grand addition of the Thames Embankment, where
the little gamins were clambering on the granite wall
and teasing the policemen, and there was a new and
striking view of St. Paul's with so much glittering fore-
ground of new masonry, and the river broke against
the embankment stairs like the sea : again was I proud
of London. . .

Fenton's Hotel is as good as my College in the way
of a substitute for a home ; the waiter almost feeds one
like a spoon-child. The shops I haunt, Pickering's for
books, Parker's near Leicester Square for old prints,
are quite as familiar and comfortable as at Eton or
Cambridge. Indeed, altogether I find London as homely
as anything in the provinces, and if the people in the
streets talked Enoflish like the Welsh or the Cumbrians
I should be very happy there. The great delight in
London, which I took fully this last Monday, is listening
to the Guards' band at St. James's, and walking- with them
towards their barracks. No orlrl has a steadier ' scarlet
fever ' than I.

Dover by moonlight at 1 1 p.m. was so brilliant as to be
almost uncanny. The sea was quite at rest, the ship, on
deck, almost empty. I lay on the bench with my bag for
the pillow, with summer trousers leaving me as cold in
the shins as Socrates in Phacdo^ but otherwise snug
enough. Got to Ostcnd at three. . . At two or so I was

1868] LONDON. AIX LA CHAPELLE 245

at Aix la Chapello, and soon found my Brother on his
bed, cheerful and reading. . . I read Heine's J^yenchinen
and Gcniians^ in French. It is hard to believe that his
wicked cruel wit can be brighter in German. He is
a mock in or fiend as far as I can see. . .

T/i7crsda}\ Sept. 3. We three, two women and I,
dared fice the sun before dinner and see the cathedral
with crreat pertinacity, working- the verger and listening
to the silken and banded sacristan or treasurer, who in
slovenly French enumerated all the relics as he showed
them, with a reiterated list of precious stones, as he
fingered the reliquaries. I took more interest in the
odd architecture of the nave than in the splendid
treasures of the sacristy ; and it seemed to me that
Charlemagne had been rivalling on a small scale the
St. Sophia of Constantinople — at least the circular
broad gallery reminded me thereof I was also much
struck with his possessing and displaying a good deal
of classic art objects ; the relief with the Rape of Pro-
serpine, and some engraved gems and cameos. And
then the mere plain rubies and emeralds are the most
changeless things that have reached us from the Pagans.
We actually see certain things of exactly the same
colour and form that they had in Cicero's time, gems. . .
To-day I read a little of Shairp's printed Lectures
on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keble. . . He was
a friend of my Brother's at Oxford. . . It was to us
two to-day like the opening of old drawers to com-
pare notes about Shairp's remarks on Wordsworth.
All three of us tasted at the same time of that spring,
then hallowed by the best of young Englishmen. We
agreed to-day in thinking the Immortality Ode over-
rated. We agreed in saying that Wordsworth, though

246 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

running down ' poetic diction,' does nevertheless himself
produce his fine effects by ingenious and Virgilian har-
monies of words, such as ' the light that never was,'
' the consecration and the poet's dream,' and that his
Borrodaile yews owe their success to the same skill as
Tennyson displays, e. g. ' murmuring in Glaramara's
inmost caves.' I said, and I repeat it here, that Words-
worth's best contribution to human happiness is the
sonnet about the ' dear child ' walking with him by the
seaside on a summer evening ' untouched by solemn
thought ' seemingly, of whom he says at the end of the
sonnet —

* Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, . . .
God being with thee when we know it not ^'

And we came together upon the planet Venus —

* In her humiUty
Touching the borders of this seat of care,
Bright not less with love than light -.'

It is wonderful that we should, without forcing our-
selves or learning or imitating, take from Wordsworth
by inheritance, as we take tastes from our parents, that
crenopathy and uranopathy, that yielding of ourselves
to running water and to still clouds, which seems to pre-
dispose us for the recognition of delicate simplicities
in child or peasant, and tunes us for the street or the
schoolroom.

* Sonnet * On the beach at Calais' (i8oa).
^ Quoted from memory : the lines are —

* Who that looks on thee
Touching, as now, in thy humility
The mountain borders of this seat of care,
Can question that thy countenance is bright,
Celestial Power, as much with love as light?'
Yarrow Rn>isited, Sec. (1831), Sonnet xvi, ' To the Planet Venus, an
Evening Star.'

1868] SIIAIRP. IVORDSWORTII 247

We arc the sons of Wordsworth, and after a quarter
of a century which has fed us with lii!Thly-sj)iced dainties,
here we arc back a<rain with tlie unlearned prophet of
Nature, back to our moonhVlu and mountain shadows,
and the healing touch of Nature.

Friday, Sept. 4. I wrote my best this morning for an
hour or more about the encouragement of poor students
at Universities, putting into form for the press things
that I have said these last two days to brother and
nephew. But the pen, like Dousterswivel's divining rod,
brincrs out notions that do not come out in talk. . .

Saturday, Sept. 5. I have been haunted to-day by
these lines : —

' Will no one tell me what she sings ? —
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago ^'

What a charm there is in the unexpected word 'un-
happy ! ' Wordsworth heard that reaping girl in some
such valley as the Braes of Balquhidder where I walked
twelve days ago. . .

Stinday, Sept. 6. Shairp says philanthropy began with
the Christians ; that is not quite true. The Spartan
reformers, the Gracchi, Lucretius, and Cicero were more
or less philanthropists. The Jews had taught humanity
already.

Liddon scouts the notion of obscure fishermen moving
Roman society by any natural influence apart from
inspiration. He might know, if he hked, that the Jews
had great influence with tlie Romans, an influence closely
resembling that of Jesuits or spiritual directors. He says

* ' The Solitary Reaper' (1803).

248 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

there is no example of a man being mythicized in his-
torical times. Nanek, the founder of the vSikhs, was.

I relish, however, Shairp s account of J. H. Newman,
and of his own undergraduate days in his essay on
Keble ; and it moved me to read of Keble bringing
Newman and Pusey to his own house, a few months
before his death. I remember Keble preaching at
Hursley in 1849, and it just agrees with Shairp 's account
of him. So we agree in the impression of Newman's
reading the Lessons, and the hushed awe which one felt
at meeting him in the street.

My Eton song is finished and copied out. It is written
with assonances and alliterations like very old English
poems, but it has not enough fusion. It is a failure.
I must be content with prose. Too old for verse ; the
little slender vein is worked out. But I have my readers,
like better men. . .

I read once more to-day Shakespeare's singular sonnet ^
in which he begs to be forgotten by him or her whom he
so loves that he cannot bear to give pain to him or her
by being remembered after death. It is the kind of self-
sacrifice which might be called morbid ; and, judging
from my own quasi-sensations, I am inclined to think
that it is factitious or forced ; but it has a charm in its
bitterness. It reminds me of Jean Valjean, retiring to die
alone that he may not mar the wedded life of the girl,
whose name I forget. How bitter is the phrase in the
last two lines, ' The wise world.'

I think we have overvalued our seventeenth-century
poets, as compared with the Gray, Collins, Thomson set.

' Sonnet Ixxi. The lines are —

* Lest the wise worlti should look into your moan,
And mock you with me alter I am gone.'

1

i868] KEBLK. NEWMAN. ' AMATURUS ' 249

I once wrote some rhymes entitled Ainahirtis^ ; they
I were very h'kc a variation on Crashaw's lines about the
possil)lc vShe, wliicli I hit upon to-day and read for the
first time. I am quite certain that I had never read
the Crashaw when I made my thin^. . .

Monday, Sept. 7. Now, what shall I do with all my
purchases ? It amuses me to go on thinking- of the
people to whom they are to be given. I am however
teased a little by misgivings — will it be good enough for
his (or her) acceptance } Silly, slight, trivial thoughts.
Meanwhile the married man thinks of his little girl, left
to-day with her aunt, and of his wife packing for an
early start. How^ is it that married people don't openly
despise bachelors for using saucers and spoons instead of
tureens and mops ? Perhaps it is as w^ell for the shops
that there are a few bachelors.

I get on a hair's breadth in talking German. Barring
the presents, it is a very frugal life here, cheaper than
at Cambridge. . . This frugal life agrees with my body ;
as for the mind, poor thing, it brings out its rummage
like a pawnbroker, all sorts of likes and dislikes and
half- thoughts. It is an onion — many skins, all skin. . .

Studying my coins to-day I saw a florin, with a
whiskered head tied up with a feeble pigtail : poor
Francis Joseph, calling himself King of Hungary,
Bohemia, Lombardy and Venice. His kingdoms break
off like bits of a starfish. He was in my pocket w-ith
a coarse overbearing thaler, so I took him out and hid
him away to keep. I should like to do some service to
the poor, well-meaning, bruised reed. And I am sorry
for Leopold II ^, whose boy is dying. These crowned
heads are everybody's cousins, and I am thinking in

* lonica^ I. p. 31. ^ King of the Belgians.

250 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

unison with many a g-ood Fleming and Styrian when
I pity them.

A., the heavy rheumatist, tells Nephew that the
negroes in Jamaica are harmless people very harshly
treated by planters, and getting no justice from the
magistrates, who are planters. It was no wonder they
broke out. It is easy for this plain, quiet, homely man
to see such a thing as this. It was not easy for Luther
to see that the peasants had grievances. Heine sneers
viciously at Luther as if he were a toady of princes, and
had betrayed his followers in condemning John of Leyden
and those poor preachers of equality, and it does seem odd
that A. should be capable of a more generous thought
than Luther. But A. would not have gone to Worms
with his chin stuck out, snorting at the Pope.

Wednesday, Sept. 9. There is a want of physical
beauty in Albert Diirer, and he does not give his figures
space enough, and his landscapes are huddled ; but ' the
painful riddle of life,' the grave compassion, the sadness
of him who must condemn and cannot heal, are in his
designs more than in any other art ; and it strikes me
that his good sad mind was pained with the foreboding-
of the religious wars that were to follow the great
German struggle which he witnessed. He could not be
serene and ambrosial like the Italians reposing in their
infallible Church, who had both worlds smoothed for
them by the Pope. . .

Thttrsday, Sept. 10. A pretty day. It brought me
one letter from Edinburgh, full of youthfulness and
worthy of a Phacdrus, and one from an old Cambridge
ally ' living in Argyleshire asking me to cross over from
JVrthshire and explaining the route. I should have

* Hugh Blackburn of Roshvcn, Argyllshire.

1868] LUTHER. A. DURER 251

learned somcthintr in that house, where the lady draws
the birds before they stiffen : ])iit what I like is being-
invited by a man who knew nie as an undergraduate ;
for of tliose honest well -spent years I have hardly a
trace or relic. Some are dead — some are gone to the
Pope — many serve the world — no one cares much for
me. I (lid not make strong friendship then, as other
young men do, partly becaUvSe of poverty, chiefly because
of mental perplexity and the fear of men's opinions.
Yes, opinions were the thorns in my path. I remember
my resolve to sw^eep away all opinions and look for
facts ; such a plague it is to be half-educated : but the
thistle-down of sentiment hung about me all the time,
luckily, and at the worst I never smoothed myself for
Belial or for Mammon. Men would have liked me then,
in the undergraduate days, if I had let them, and it was
humility, not pride, that kept me back from intimacies. . .

I do well to go back to-morrow. I have my lessons
to learn. I am to go to-morrow through a land w^here
many kind mothers are thinking of one mother — their
Queen, who is in agony for her boy. No wonder they
worship Mary.

King's College, Cambridge, Sept 15.— Of my
journey nothing shall be said, but that I for two hours
delighted in the lively sea, in all the Galateas and Cymo-
doces that gambolled behind the paddles. Then, finding
the head ache a little, took the heavy hat off, hoisted
umbrella, and again enjoyed the air : then got into Kqf^
and almost sleep : then, after five hours oieuploia^ landed
very hungry and enjoyed food unusually. I was here
before eleven, and had a faithful, gentle friend to receive
me, who has been with me three days since, with croquet,
fldne.^ and oapKuv^.

252 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Stratton, Hampshire, Sept 17. — Yesterday I left
my ever-memorable rooms and respected servants, and
scarred lawn with a single harebell ladying- it over the
grass. . . . By night I was in this excellent house, the
guest of a truly good man \ . . . His guests were Lord
Eversley and his daughter, Lord and Lady E., Mr. and
Mrs. R. I have seldom relished anything much more
than sitting next to the old Speaker and listening as he
talked to others. ... I keep on catching the majestic
lower notes of his voice, which in his prime in Peel's
days I have heard singing ' Order at the Bar' And
to-day I was all alive when he talked of Graham and
Palmerston (not to me, but to Lord E.}. ' Graham was
the ablest man I ever knew at analysing a bill.' ' Better
than Henley ? ' ' Yes, much better than Henley — of
a higher stamp. Yet he never got through a speech
without saying something to get himself into a scrape.
For instance, when praising a new ship he said it was
like the Royal George.' In the Pacifico debate he began
by saying, ' Well, Mr. vSpeaker, I think we've had enough
of Nisi Prius' ... I wish there had been more of
this critical record. Anyhow, I delight in seeing this
wholesome, dignified man, so cheerful and liberal still
— all alive about geraniums, which he grows, and South -
downs which he wants to buy, and County business ;
not less brisk about Commissions on which he has
served, and schemes for the British army and the Irish
Church. He told me with some joy about the great
improvements in his school, Winchester. He is a good
listener — not a man of marked shrewdness, but just what
the First English Commoner should be in bearing. . . .

' Lord Northbrook.

i868] STRATTON. LORD EVERSLEY 253

He says that Mr. Pitt's real last words were about the
veal pies at Bellamy's. . .

It is possible that it may be worth while to record the
time table of a country house in 1868. This is our
day : — W'e are called at eight, shutters unbarred (this is
a detestable practice, shuttering-, I rebel against it). Gong
at nine. We meet in the library. Aly Lord reads Job,
chapter vii, without a word of comment. Job tells us
we are not to rise from the grave, which is a doctrine
decidedly out of harmony with the prayer which follows.
We talk a few minutes ; then to breakfast, where the
girl, aged fifteen, makes coffee, and the servants hand
round delicate morsels of hot meat ; not at all a coarse
meal. Then we all rise together. I find myself soon
in the Library. I rummage. Two ladies come in and
cause over photographs, leaving me alone. When
I calculate the housemaid has done her worst in my
room, I go to it. Then, with an open lattice, letting in
the bird voices and tempting me to look at a beloved
cedar, I sit and scribble. Meanwhile all the males are
shooting — females writing letters, I hope. I stroll. I find
the shrubbery and glades empty. I can look at every
tree at leisure, squeeze the fragrant juniper berries, and
count the acorns on a spray. Then I go with F. to see
the shooting-people, and share their very solid luncheon
under a rick of sainfoin. The luncheon is plain but
excellent. I eat more than I should eat indoors with
the ladies, and our talk is more lively. I come back
sooner than they, and read again : but at six I go to the
schoolroom and join the ladies at tea. My host comes
too, and calls me off for a grave private talk in the
adjoining small morning room, which is the meeting-
place before dinner. Then I go back and get a feast

254 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

of music. At eight, very punctually, gong- and dinner :
this punctuality is delightful, and has a moral effect. . . .
When we returned to the library we had too many
things offered to us : after coffee, liqueur, then tea,
then seltzer water, finally tobacco. Two ladies and two
males played whist, the rest talked. No music, no
general conversation. This is liberty, but not mutual
improvement. All my host says about politics is
genuine partisanship, but sound Liberalism, considerate
patriotism, public spirit, prudence, generosity.

SOUTHBOROUGH, Monday, Sept. 21. — I have been
here two days with a man who hates Liberals, hates
the enemies of the clergy, hates the restorers of churches,
hates the nineteenth century, yet bridles his tongue,
refrains from sarcasm, cherishes his friendships, struggles
against the vices of boys, returns them good for evil,
loves art austerely, feasts upon the sight of his blue
paper seen through his geranium leaves, leaps with
delight to a quince tree on catching the smell in the
lane, forgets his fatigue in joy at pointing out a grey
owl slowly and lowly flying across the dusky field,
broods with ardency (as Keats would say) over the
soul-like pink waves of the sunset, and stands with
me delighting in the gay graceful picture ^ of the boy in
fancy dress — Henry Sidney, afterwards Lord Romney ;
and listens to me respectfully when I tell him of the
greater Henry Sidney, conqueror of Ireland, the happy
father of Phih'p, for the vindication of whose honour
Philip forsook the Court and quarrelled with his terrible
Queen. . .

Eton, Friday^ Sept. 25. — 7.30 a.m. I began work

' At Pcnshurbt.

i8oy] SPEECH AT WINDSOR. TELESCOPE 255

arr.iln, cntcrintr on my seventieth term. I find several
old friends an* volunteering- for my Political l^xonomy
Lectures. . . All Friday I worked hard. At seven
heoan extra work with Fifth F^orm pupils — FVench,
Greek, &c. . . I am in my twenty-fourth year of pro-
fessional life, unwearied, ready for fresh burdens.

Tuesday, Oct. 21. I am too busy for this book to
s^row. Yesterday I made, for the first time, an election
speech. It w\as in the Windsor Theatre. I had to follow
men who had been tickling- the electors with fun. I gave
them plain, instructive stuff, and did not try or wish to
make them laugh. On reflection I think it was a spirited
but prudent speech. . . . This bit of work gave me no
more trouble than a school lecture — not so much, nor
did it make my pulse higher ; only my lips got dry by-
opening my mouth over the gas foot-lights. I had two
little w^alks to-day, half an hour each. After a turn
round Upper Club I strolled into the Chapel church-
yard, not the new cemetery. There was a great charm
in the sun traps between the buttresses, and I wish
to see the place given up to very young- children as
a playground. . . All my spare time goes to music
and conversation wdth three or four boys, but I have
plenty of solitude, bestowed on the preparation of
lessons and lectures. Blanche Cornish came and looked
at prints and china. I made her happy by giving her
a cup and saucer. . . I have had a heap of work with
school books. I have been to the Head Master about
our telescope \ and things are w^ell in train. He is
co-operative; Dalton and Mozley do well about it. If
I get it done it will be a victory. Last night I saw
the Pleiads for the first time through a glass. The big-

^ The telescope in the New Schools at Eton was a gift from W. J.

256 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

stars were fiery red to me, and like the big pendants
of a chandelier compared with the little ones, I saw^
also /3 Cygni — a double star — the two close together.
This beats me, this Universe : how odd it is that there
should be a possible conception or belief of one Uni-
verse. . . . This evening I lectured Arthur Lyttelton
and his class on the history of music, from Hullah and
Moscheles. Two things have occurred to me. Dante
and his fellows shaped a language available more than
any other for music, three hundred years before there was
any music ready for it. Searching for a symbol of infinity,
the fourteenth and fifteenth century people threw up
hiofh cathedrals. These were not suited for musical
sounds, yet in music men were to find what architecture
could not give, ' faithful comforting.' Real happy music
began when Jesuits began to build low- vaulted churches ;
'a shut-in place gives back a sweet sound '.' . . .

To-day Joynes preached to the Fourth Form most
religiously, tenderly, patriarchally ; genuine deep Pro-
testant religion : we had many masters there. A varied,
active, peaceful day : not without mirth, for we had a
very pleasant party at Ainger's, with floods of laughter.

Oct. 28. There was no time for singing before Chapel.
I was with the Fourth Form an hour. Athanasius was
more horrible than usual, and Church Militant and Com-
mandments more odious. At 11.20 we were off to the
Beeches in a break; Ainger and Marindin were the
ushers in charge, I a rover only. We sang a little on
the way, first driving, then walking through the wood-
land. We raced about the dells, and had to shout
shrilly to get together. They cut sticks, climbed trees,
picked ferns, combined in groups and broke up, freely.
* Horace, Sat. I. 4, 76.

1869] MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE 257

We went throuoh Dropmore with unusual va^abondry,
with a dull oanlcncr. . . \\v dined at 2.30 and enjoyed
the tire, then walked up the bank to the locks, explored
a brewery, looked in at a flour mill, ran races. We
drove back in the dusk. At 5.30 we all came to the
Mouse Trap and hanselled my German tea-things,
finishino^ the Greek honey which Elliot gave me. We
had songs too. This perfect party broke up at 8.30.

Duke of Cornwall Hotel, V\jymo\]tv{, March 31,
1869. — At 1 1. 1 5 Elliot and I went across the Park to
Farnborough : found a regiment there just starting for
Aldershot. Walked with them — a jolly beginning of
a tour, and a good way of spending an hour. Dined at
Winchester. Good old Gib ^ came to dine, and talked
on fluently and freshly about his scores of acquaintances,
and discussed his little military topics. . .

We strolled down the pretty little river and had
a scramble ; we trespassed in Wolvesey Hall grounds
to see the handsome mediaeval house ; w^e explored the
school buildings, only the outside. Elliot and I had seen
St. Cross the day before. I left the two to talk after
dinner and wrote reports. . .

Saturday. Gib came after breakfast to see us off. He
is just what he was ; a genuine boy, and a good soldier
withal.

An hour at Exeter : Cathedral looked jewellish and
brilliant after Salisbury. I am glad to say the monu-
ments interested me exactly as they did the last time
I saw them, particularly the tablets in memory of Scotch
and Northern people who came to prolong their lives

* Francis Gilbert Dyke Acland, of the Rifle Brigade : died, Aug. 24,
1874, aet. 31.

s

258 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

in the mild climate of Devonshire. Exeter looked so
bright and prosperous that I was proud of it : there was
blossom in the fruit gardens, and for a minute I hoped
I was running away from the winter.

Torbay did not look bright. At sunset we came to
the Dart with joy increased by hunger — and we liked
the view out of window because of a full moon. We
drank cyder and were hopeful. But next morning early
the wicked wind rattled horribly in the windows of our
new over-summerish hotel, and there was no ferry to
take us over to Dartmouth, and I had to throw away all
my plans of going to see coast-scenery. We went to
church on our own side : people were very attentive in
lending books there ; the singing dragged like a plough.

We went off for a walk— got on to the steepest of
plough lands sloping to the sea. Sea calm in spite of
the wind ; ugly clouds making pretty reflections. A
long scramble round a conspicuous lime-kiln, picked
a few pretty flowers — but there was no great amount
of West England or Gulf Stream attainable. . .

Whilst Elliot was packing I was sitting in the public
room, listening to a good conversation about the
prospects of Dartmouth, by which I learnt something ;
also reading ; but I learn less from books than from men :
this stage I have reached, at which I used to wonder :
the odd thing is that one should as a matter of course,
so to speak naturally, go first into the other way of
thinking, so as to imagine that one does learn more
from books. However, a mixture of the two is best. . .

Plymouth, TJmrsday. — We saw docks and ships
under the wing of Captain Napier of the Lion, a very
kind, even-mannered man. He showed us first Achilles,
then Lord Clyde and Prince Albert turret-ship : here

T869] SHIPS AT PLYMOUTH 259

he made us laut^li at his expense by suddenly appearing-
with his honest face inside one of the helmets or cowls
which protect the turret marksman from everything- but
direct ' facers.'

He and I stood together in the absurd little box which
is to be held in action by the captain and the master,
or, as it will be hereafter, the ' navigating lieutenant ' —
and I thought humorously of Nelson's being in such
a cupboard, and sadly of ' the gallant, good Riou,' who
had no such protection w^hen he made Amazon^ weak
frigate, stand still before a Danish battery to do the
work of a Russell gone aground, and when a round
shot plumped into a squad of marines hauling at a brace,
said, ' Never mind, boys ; let us die together ' — and died
straightway, fighting against an enemy whom he could
never have hated. Napier of the Lion would do no
less — all for dear honour ; not for our trickling tears
and echoing ballads. I said to Napier, * Will you be so
good as to show us Canoptts ? ' and some time after
I anxiously reminded him — and indeed I feared he
w^ould forget the old ship in the crowed of scientific
novelties. But when we sat at luncheon (Her Majesty's
beef was hot and her pork was cold. I ate the pork to
be like a seaman, and I munched biscuit patriotically,
thinking it w^as ship biscuit — but it wasn't) there was
Canoptcs lifting a fair bosom over a lap of shadow, for
the sun was out just then for a cheerful hour.

That day we rowed past this beautiful model ship,
Nelson's trophy; next day w^e sailed by her twice, and
I made my companions, who had never heard of her
under | that] name or the old name Franklm^ care for her
more than for unbattered Renowns and Revenges, . .

At 1 1. 1 5 we walked back in charge of our host,

S 2

26o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

who said ' Friend ' to challeng-ing- sentries, and cleared
the Fort ; and then in the street appeared his funny
little dog Vesper, with ears like a bat, skirmishing behind
every" dirt heap. . .

Marindin i, a handsome, spirited engineer, treated us to
the stout rowing and skilful sailing of four little blue-
coated sappers, who wriggled admirably through a
Stansfield sea, took us to Drake's Island, where we saw
yet one more fort and felt like Guy Fawkes when
threading the tunnels of the magazine, and in open air
discussed the proper form of an embrasure as if we were
sappers at least. . .

I proposed that . . . we should go up Hamoaze and
renew our acquaintance with Canopus. So we had
a merry sail and went far enough to see London (who
fought at Sebastopol), Howe (who never went to sea),
St. Jean d'Acre, Orlando, and many more ; and Saltash
Bridge at the end of all — an admirable cruise, and not
late for the train.

Thanks to Marindin ; item to Cox and Napier — and
to the anonymous worthy sailors and sappers who
boated us. Now we are real Englishmen ; we have been
in the heart of the fighting nation.

Suppose there is a war — how we shall throb for every
engineer ! how we shall send our hearts with every iron-
clad ! Yet we must tarry by the stuff. . .

King's College, Cambridgp:, Sunday, April ii. —
Coming here to be alone I feel rather sad, and the
Journal serves to remind me of hours spent cheerfully.

Bindon -, where I was nine days ago, is a truly cheerful
home. J^lliot was very silent there, but his face often
lit up when Warre made fun, quoted, or sang ; and the

* Major Marindin, R. E. ^ Near Wellington, Somerset.

1869] PLYMOUTH. QUANTOCK HILLS 261

ladies got him to play bczi(juc, and to talk so far as to
say he should like to spend his whole hfe at Eton. . .

Monday. A long- drive by Bishop's Lydeard, where
we saw the church, to Crowcombe, at the foot of
Quantock, to which, in honour of S. T. Coleridge and
his Sara, we clomb by a good beechy, ferny dell and got
a good view of the Severn sea. . .

Tuesday. I sat five or seven hours to Miss Margaret
Warre, sculptress, for a medallion profile portrait in
clay. They said it was a good likeness, and I got great
credit for being a singularly good sitter. My captivity
was beguiled with some music of Miss Florence's. . .

April 22. This has been a remarkable day — the
wedding of Charles Wood and Lady Agnes Courtenay.
It was in St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, which was full,
galleries and all ; the central passage left empty and
carpeted with red. I could not see to the end, except
just the outlines of the bride ; but I heard and imagined.
It was a solemn, rapt congregation : there was a flood
of music and solemn, tender voices. The married man
and woman took the Lord's Supper with hundreds of
w^itnesses who did not communicate— doubtful religion.
Perhaps a good many were Church Union folk, honour-
ing their chairman.

After a long pause and some preliminary ushering,
the married ones came out. Charles Wood was the
wrong side for me, but he reached across with his left
hand, silently. . .

I missed their mother ; but I saw their tall, bony, grey
father. It is seventeen years since I first spoke to him ;
he was then in his hard, ambitious, combative stage :
I have watched him since gathering youth — yes, a new
kind of youth, from sons and daughters. To-day his and

262 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

his wife's joys are the ineffable mysteries that Izaak
Walton speaks of. I trust the moon shines in Belgrave
Square as it does here. I saw and was greeted by
Augustus Legge\ who got a little sunstroke at Marlow
with Charles Wood in my boating party, in 1856: now
a clergyman ' proper.' . .

Then I walked off with Henry and Frederick Wood
to their house, and thence across Hyde Park, which was
in beauty new to me, to Grosvenor Square ; but they
could not persuade me to go in. I put my invitation in
here, being proud of it. Had I taken advantage of it
I should have been out of place. The wedding joy
gives me a little agony of weeping which is inconvenient
with people sitting opposite, and with social necessities
of talk and simper; and my solemn pathetic enthusiasm
would have clashed with the platitudes of speech-
making.

I ran off through carriages, and escaped to Bond
Street, and whilst thinking of the wedding I was nearly
run down by an omnibus. But in a short time I was
copying things out of a book, on the precious metals,
for business purposes. . .

F. tells me I am expected to be Professor of History ;
Munro says the same. This gave me something to think
of Could I venture to take such a place with so little
knowledge and power ? They must be badly off for
people with talking power. Every other man I meet
knows more than I do : but it does not follow that those
who know wish to teach, or can teach, or will condescend
to teach ' poll men.'

I (loul)t whether I am fit for anything but what I do
here. Hut this cannot last long. . .

' Bishop ot Lichfield.

1869] ST. PAUL'S, KNIGHTSBRIDGE 263

I have hardly read anything these hoh'days, and feel
fearfully bare and unprovided for the campaig-n. But
I liave had real rest, variety, human interest. I have
transacted some Colle^q^e business, made out fourteen
Latin exercises, written a creamy Latin letter to our
Visitor Bishop ' — full of elegant, old-fashioned compli-
ments— corrected proofs of a Greek lesson-book, read
a little Latin.

May 24. I am thinking of a bay, with a quiet sea,
embracing the sunlight, basking, resting, reflecting : one
of those coves or fiords that one sees in summer, that
look as if they had hoarded their ancient calmness for us
for ever so long — a refuge, where the ocean sighs and
sobs with immortahty, where mortals feel their hunger
for life, but feel it peacefully and submissively.

And I am thinking also that this bit of the earth's
expression, this soul-full bit of the earth, was as fair and
calm before our sensibility was engendered ; and, thirdly,
I am thinking that it — the quiet bay — is going at a wild
pace through God's playground, and it seems a wonder
that there can be such stillness in such ceaseless, swift
movement. Did I not once — surely I did — enjoy like a
lover the first sight of a sunny bay } and now I cannot
think of it without heartache.

But I trust the young still leap seawards and forget,
when they reach the coast, all the difference between life
and not-life, between the earth as a home and the earth
as a restless sepulchre. . .

Capenoch, a tig. 7. — One day we saw a late nest of
greenfinches with the young fledgelings under a bower
of honeysuckle ; I had never before seen birds in a nest.
Another day we caught a young heron walking through

' The Bishop of Lincoln, Visitor of Eton and King's.

264 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

the underwood. When we went in the boat we came to
a swallow's nest in a hole of the stone lock, and handled
a young swallow almost able to fly ; and we got under
a wooden bridge and handled the Qgg of a sand-martin
taken from its nest, but put it back piously. We piled
the boat with water-lilies, loosestrife, mallow, and forget-
me-not. My time was chiefly taken up with letters. . .

Where should I like to live ? Anywhere, provided
I were secure against sponging, intrusive people, and
shut up with gay, tender, graceful, youthful -hearted
people. A modest request. But I almost give myself
this at Eton. I get two ends of the day free for the
company of the gentle and kindly who have no cards to
play.

A letter came to-day which gave me a little sting of
joy : L. liked me last week — dear child. Odd that
I should begin to like and be liked by mere g7'rls at the
end of my time. Too late. But I can give them lockets
and clasps.

Aug. II. Came a wise letter from S., giving sound
reasons against my romantic scheme of going to Halsdon.
Wherefore I wrote to Eton to hatch a plot for improve-
ment of my berth there, but I lean to the hope of getting
rooms in the quadrangle looking into the Provost's or the
Fellows' garden. Meanwhile, am I altering } It seems
to me as if I were coming of age, dropping the literary
sentiment, and entering upon the real living poetry of
humanity. . .

I have been to-day to see cows. They have their kind
heads imprisoned by the horns between movable posts.
I wish I owned twelve cows. Why should I not have
a cow of my own in Needham's garden ' } Pull down his

' Near the High Street, Eton.

1869] HALS DON. RETIREMENT 265

house, plant pc^pl.irs to ^row (juick, have byres, and
roses, and strawberries, and a place of refuge. Barne's
Pool will soon be sweet, and I could keep out the
floods. . .

An old lady at D. is disgusted with a still older lady
of D. who goes on with her visiting ; and she says to my
host, ' After coming to a certain age one has no right
to go visiting and being a trouble to others. I know
I shall feel slighted when not asked out, but I know
I ougfht not to ^o when too old. So I have instructed
my niece to stop my visiting when the time comes.'
This is just what Admiral Harrington did in the last
centur}\ . . The falling off of pupils ought to be to me
a timely warning to resign. Can I lay down a rule ?
If I get no application from parents for a whole year,
shall I take that for a warning to leave school, or shall
I bind some wise man by a promise to tell me when
to go } . .

A tig. 14. I waited two hours for the train. The fresh
air is a sovereign remedy for fidget. This is the one
great set-off against age : fresh air, the cheap luxury, is
consciously enjoyed. I used to wonder at and mock my
mother's thankful murmurings and sighings about it ;
now I am perhaps less thankful, but not less sentient, than
she was. . .

Aug. 18. Everything Crimean is so fresh to me that
life seems to have stood still these fifteen years.

My vile eyes that made me a muff — it is right they
should weep. . .

I had also a lively talk with the farmer's wife,
Mrs. Darmid, about collies and Gaelic words. The
good dame has a clever son at Edinburgh as a student,
just now making hay. Oh, happy student, that makes

266 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

hay and metaphysics alternately, happier by far than
he who chops logic and plays cricket by turns. If
I had but made hay at twenty ! . .

As soon as we were off — glad to escape the stand.'ng"
about which suits military men, and smokers, and
people with good figures — C. began to be happy, and
the girls got happier. We explored the humble ruins
of the Kirk, a mere trace of ground plan, and the
walled kirkyard ... a little crowded kirkyard no
bigger than a peasant's garden, raised by strata of
Highland folk, the bones of the men and women
who bred whole companies to serv^e in Highland
regiments under Howe and Crichton ; and there was
I, with those young things who treat death as a rather
eccentric instrument in the orchestra of the world. . .
We left the road, crossed the Almond, close to a
sheepfold, whose voices we woke, picking as we went
staghead moss and flowers, up a voiceless, melancholy
rocky, heathery glen — looking for the robbers cave.
We came in an hour or less to a natural box of
rock that would shelter one on three sides. . .
I clambered up the rock, finding it unexpectedly split
and harbouring little ferns in the crevices ; putting
a white handkerchief on my hat, I turned myself into
half-sentry, half- beacon between the exploring party
and the carriage grown-up party. I had to wait an
hour, listening to the fitful sighs of the burns and
the bleating of two sheep ; it was a power of silence
and a spell of Scottish colouring. At last . . . the
others came, then we heard the horn summoning us
to the patient carriage ; and I walked, but stopp)ed to
look at 'mica' or gold glittering in bits of quartz. . .
After thirty -six miles and seven hours we were back in

1869] CAPENOCH AND LAWERS 267

time for cricket, and at nloht wc had duetts once
more. So ended a jioctical day, for which my feeble
heart says ^race.

Sitiiday, 2 p.m. My last day. . . I worked hard at
lighting- a lire, nettling my hands in gathering fuel.
We boiled our kettle — the Colonel was adroit at it ;
the children laid things and made tea ; we enjoyed
it. The sun was sinking down to the strong mountains
beyond Loch Eam ; there was a breeze gay as V.,
a sky pure as B.

I am slowly exploring the headlands and bays of
that terra iiicognila^ girlhood. . .

To-day I walked to church. In one sentence of
a prayer came four metaphors. . . The minister had a
good voice and perfect self-possession, but he prayed
in the imperative mood- giving a rapid series of orders
to the Giver of Grace. . . ^

A teg. 22,. We went to see his farm-palace — solid
stone sculptured devices, such as a gigantic wheat-ear
to mark the thrashing-place, where the oats leapt out
so fiercely as to be like hail on my face ; a cow or
bull's head to denote the byres, where we saw a sort
of Apis that had been priced at ^^ 1,200, and a mild
Jupiter that had slain in his megrims two men — no,
their real names were Butterfly I and II. We duly
W'Orshipped their bullships, and saw reverential herds-
men pulling them by their rings and gently whipping
them. We stood gazing at half sociable peacocks, w^e
sat unconsciously on happily shy w^asps' nests, w^e ex-
plored tunnels like Posilippo, we fretted under stone
ramparts w^orthy of Malta, which concealed luxurious
gardens ; no functionaries came to our rescue, patient
wives waited and kept us waiting for their over-

268 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

weeningly agricultural husbands, and the hour that
should have been given to the arts was fretted away.
Even when the bucolic gentlemen deigned to rejoin us,
we fell under the stupid sway of a gardener who did not
know one tree from another : being asked whether they
could grow cedars, replied that they had all kinds of
creepers. We wandered as in the Maze at Hampton
Court, every minute getting near the house, and then
drawn back to see some monster of an Araucaria, or
some Cockney arrangement of bedded plants, that you
will see in any modern garden — not but what the turf
was exceedingly good, and the vistas of pines and
ribbons of flowers led the eye now to a grand point
of the Ochills, then to the heroic Stirling Castle
rock. . . .

[Birmingham.] We explored Baughts Enamelled
Iron Works. A grey-haired man there had been at it
fifty years alone with his monotone ; he was rather deaf
He said with some passion, ' I can't sleep for the pains
in my arms.' He had a sort of monopoly. I suppose he
can save, perhaps. I imagine him energetic, Calvinistic,
rich. Will he wish to do it again in the kingdom of
heaven } I should like to go again and talk to him.
How one would pity him if he were a prisoner! But
as he does it freely, and is proud of his skill, ought
I not to envy him rather ? At seventy I could not
do anything useful ; even now, am I more useful than
the ' setter ' }

It is 7 p.m. now. I hope he is enjoying his pipe,
and looking at something fairer than that leprous
sheet of iron out of which fly no sparks, whose sound
is a rel)ellious discord, whose very shape and look
changes not for all the blows : only he held up a

1869] BIRMINGHAM. 1 1 OM BURG 269

scjuarc of it to show liow stiff he had made it. When
he has made it, and the others have powdered it and
baked it, after all it serves the most vulg-ar of purposes —
advertizinq;-. . .

[HOMBURG.] A 210^. 28. I have had the rew^ard for
travelling-, that sky which accounts for man s hope of im-
mortality, first in the mystic hour before sunrise, when the
low coast of Flanders was transfigured, and the sail-clad
ships towed out by rowing--boats silently passed us hke the
angels of daw^n ; again on the Rhine at Cologne, where
the moon queened it over the gas nymphs of the banks,
and the sorry green of the river was turned to a poetical
hue ; again last night at Giessen, where we had a ripple
of very distant mountains breaking the horizon below
the pearly gauze clouds, all the sky being clear except
where the sunset was reflected ; again three hours later,
when, steering by compass after studying the map,
1 boldly took my companion down the narrow streets
of the old Frankfort to the bridge over the Main, where
the moon lay upstream.

I remember also two pious women praying aloud,
one of them singing also, with the choir at vespers
in Cologne Cathedral, and a church boy going up
a little ladder to light gas. . .

Aug. 29. The Opera House was a vapour bath —
I recoiled from it ; was indemnified for the sacrifice
of my ticket by a pleasant twilight walk through and
out of the town, listening to children, and to the kindly
laughter of girls at a pump, and to the merry singing
of seven rudely-dressed working women who came out
from the fields four in a row and three in a row behind,
swinging round a corner and hidden for a time by a tall
pleached alley of vines : just a bit of Mirella scenery and

270 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

song. I heard a little dog bark in a German manner,
quite different from the cosmopolitan bark. I saw two
little black goats going gravely along the road, as if
they were following a friend to some stable. . .

This is not what people go to Homburg for ; they
are the little random bounties that Mercury flings in
the way of one who sees but little. . .

Cassel, Tuesday, Aug. 31. — A big open market-
place under our windows; wholesome, yr^?/^/;^, peasant
women trafficking all manner of vegetables, pots and
pans, with no clatter of tongues : Luther's folk, with
peaked caps jutting out above smooth brows and fair, thin
hair. . . . We wound along the bank of River Fulda,
crossed into the Werra, exchanged a lovely pink sand-
stone for grey eruptive rock : on to Erfurt, Weimar, and
the classic country ; remembered Gustavus, noticed the
vineyards, had a fine sunset in Leipzig gardens, good-
natured people all the day, and a kellner at Leipzig
who devoted himself to us. Got to Dresden at eleven :
a long, slow journey. . . To-day the weather is still
tonic and brilliant. I avenge myself on the sickness
that plagued me here ten years ago, by freely enjoying
the Elbe banks. . .

No. 6, Hotel Belle Vue, Dresden, Sept. 10,
2.30 p.m. — Just finished Nuces, having done one to-
day, three yesterday. Hot day, fresh breeze ; pretty
room, which costs me (with the berths adjoining) ten
shillings a day, besides candles and service ; its amenity
has reconciled me to life. We go to-morrow.

I was ill last week. I have read a pretty, virtuous,
thoughtful book, Hisioire de Sibylie^ par Octave
Fciiitlct. It makes one think gravely and religiously
of marriage, it rid my mind of the taste of Balzac's

1869] CASSEL. DRESDEN. MEISSEN 271

bitter book \ I cannot get through About's L' Hoin77ie
a r Oreille Cassce. . .

I have been interested in some old copperplates and
etching-s, and have bought some autotypes of them.
There is a subtle charm in Albert Diirer and Lucas
van Leyden. Music has disappointed me, but it has
ser\^ed as an accompaniment to the immortal sky, which
I look at humbly from the Briihl Terrace.

One day we spent on the Elbe one hour and a half
going to Meissen, three coming back; good weather,
much that was almost beautiful, good inn zum Hirsch.
One very handsome man working at a china plate,
boys painting plates, speaking, if they must speak,
in a whisper. The potter's wheel more wonderful and
charming than ever — inexhaustibly amusing. Odd that
the mind of man should contain the circle, that it is
nowhere visible in not-man, not even in man's own
body (how about the pupil of the eye ? Is it not to
be found in the bull's-eye, and in an infusorial shield ?).
Of the pictures, I still like those that I liked nine
years ago, and some more besides. Correggio's ' Doctor'
not photographed — why? Correggio's 'Cupid' also not
photographed — why ? Rembrandt's ' Manoah's wife,'
profile, light on forehead. . . Rubens' ' Two Sons.'

No answer from my Brother, but my mind runs daily
back to Halsdon ; I figure to myself many a little bit
of garden and woodland. It half makes me young
again to hope for the growth of trees. . .

Eton, Sept. 16. — Beginning my twenty-fifth year of
professional life, not without a timely warning of decay.
For two days ago, after three hours' real enjoyment

^ La Peau de Chagrin.

272 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept. 1869

of sea and storm, I gave in, on having to change my
place to avoid ducking, and two pangs made me, for
an hour after landing, tingle from top to toe with an
uncanny fluttering of the heart, and there seemed
a naughty paw of a monster akin to that brute Death
clutching at me. If he would but spare the Faradays,
... he might do his worst with such stuff as I am ; but
I can't bear to think of the pure, the wise, the tenderly
pious, being cut off.

Since I did Journal we have had a fierce storm ;
it is raging still. . . The storm did not hinder my
solemn delight in the sky and the crescent moon on
Saturday last between Ghent and Ostend ; and here
yesterday we had a tragic sunset behind the poor old
elms, bared and prepared for their fall. . .

Seeley is Professor of Modern History. This is
a great relief — not to have been teased about it.
I had half dreaded its being offered to me. Had it
been offered I should have refused it, partly because
1 am not learned, partly because I don't care about
history in the common meaning of the word, partly
because I should get a very poor permanent working
class at Cambridge compared with what I get here,
partly because the salary is not half what I get here,
and I want all my money now for Halsdon.

I am glad it is settled. There was a time when it
troubled me a little — Munro's saying that I was to be
the man. I had rather, if a Professor at all, profess
Political Economy. Kut I am really a triple Professor
here, and get good classes and good pay ; why go to
Cambridge for a little ?

I have to give a lecture here about ten weeks' hence
on the seventeenth century, and the topics swarm in

June 1870] CAMBRIDGE PROFESSORSHIP 273

my head. Wayte says my lectures are worth havlncf
because they come out of themselves, as it were, through
the pores from the fulness of the heart. . .

To A, D. Coleridge.

Nov. 27, 1869.

You cannot at all understand me if you imagine that
I would deign to stand for a Professorship. Eighteen
years ago I allowed a friend to make a feeble effort to
get me employment away from school. But I never
stirred a finger for the Professorship. I was told years
after Kingsley's appointment that Spencer Walpole, M.P.,
tried to get me the place, applying to Palmerston ; but
he never said a word to me of it. . .

Had I been asked to take Kingsley's place, which
I did think just possible (because I had heard Cambridge
men, such as Munro, say something of it), I should have
refused it.

I am about three times a Professor here as I could be
at Cambridge, and get three times the income. If there
is any Professorship I can imagine myself taking it is
Fawcett's^ But I want all my Eton income to keep up
my brother's house ^ which I am going to rent next year,
and in which I shall write school books.

To Lord Rosebery.

2 High Street, Eton, June 20, 1870.

Your suggestion does you credit, and I have forwarded
your note to the hero of the day. . .

The day must be, I think, John Bap., next Friday ;

^ The Chair of Political Economy at Cambridge.
2 Halsdon, near Torrington.

T

274 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

and I will leave Wise's Yard in the good old style
at I2.0 for a Parslovtenne^ of the most orthodox
character. I burn my Rubicon, cross my scabbard, and
throw away my bridge at once by writing to order
ducks and pie, &c.

If you don't come I shall expect a telegram, and
I shall fill up with boyflesh lacking your soul of wit
and mirth probably ; but there are some festive lads still
here, and some that like ducks, and one or two that like
me ; so that I can fill up gaps, but I must have a few
hours to do it. . .

Make an effort. You can go to a ball after it, but
don't ask me to let you ' catch a train ' in time for
dinner — that is pure slavery, having to run to catch
a train ; and it is that which sets one against asking
Londoners to come. Those who come should be
altogether doys in their ways that day ; tractable as well
as merry, strictly obedient to discipline, tender of the
Parslovian roses, &c., &c. I expect you. . .

To A. H. Drimwtond.

Eton, July 24, 1871.

I do not at all pity you for moving to camp. Work is
much better than moping or pleasure. I hope you will
do digging, skirmishing, marching, roughing, going
without shirts, and hating all Fenians, conspirators,
rowdies, and enemies of Great Britain. . .

I hope to see the Army become intellectually equal to
the Navy.

' W. J.'s name (a variation on Varsovienne) for a water-part}' to
Marlow and dinner at the Angler's Rest, then kept by the hospitable
Mrs. Parslovv.

i87i] INVITATION TO HALS DON 275

To Mrs. War re Cornish.

Hai.sdon, ylttgusi 25, 1871.

The clock does not g'O ; it has a small breakage of
the o^lass ; it is now in the billiard-room. Will you have
some honey with it, just taken by St. Philips with a veil
over his venerable Dolton face, and vinegar, pungent
and repulsive, on his skilful hands. Or will you come
and fetch it ? Torrington is actually vacant ; Stourton ^
will be vacant on Monday, Way - on Wednesday. . .

There is another horse, a cob called Graveller: he is
bought partly to draw, or, as the Rev. Dod says, to
' lead ' gravel from the river to the paths ; also to bring
Bridgewater bricks from Eggesford to make a wall for
Perdita^, and iron hurdles from Bideford to fence the
lower lea-path where the hedge containing the wild
boar is to be refreshed with sods (' clats,' says St. James ^),
and a bench (St. Phil, calls it) for wallflowers all the w^ay
along ; also to bring heath from HoUowcombe Moor to
fill up gaps in rhododendron beds. This cob will go
without wheels with a man on his back, having just
dropt the local architect when going too fast round
a corner.

There is a pony called Robin : the way to ride him is
to have very long legs, and get your feet on the ground,
like Paddy in the sedan chair — otherwise he throws you
off; he has dropt two boys.

We arch — we don't often hit the target, even at forty
yards, but we know how to bend a bow. Do you knov/
which side goes outside ?

* Gardeners at Halsdon. ' Names of rooms at Halsdon.

^ A bed in the Halsdon garden, for wild flowers named in Winter'' s
Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

T 2

276 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

I have done forty-five stanzas of Sapphics since Monday
morning". I have done 800 strokes at the force-pump
this morning-, after doing ten stanzas. There are four
cows and floods of milk. There is a foal, engaging but
not unblemished. Margaret's hoop has gone loose ; but
the swing is still up, like Jack the painter, at the mercy
of the wind.

Will you come ?

To Lord Rosebery.

Halsdon, Sept. 2, 1 87 1.

I suppose none of your people know" Scott's last lines
written at Abbotsford the night before he went away,
for Dora Wordsworth's album \ The Wordsworth family
kept them, and I have a copy ; very sad and paralytical,
but interesting. . .

These lines were sent me by one who got them from
the Wordsworths of Riseholme (episcopal). I suppose
Lockhart might have printed them, but he was right not
to do so.

Lord Dufferin, whose eloquence I am proud of, since
my Tutor- used to call him ' Orator,' made a very elaborate
speech at Belfast, too smart to be in the outside sheet
of the Tniies ; but it was buncombe to say that Ireland
only wanted a Scott — for Ireland has not enough in it
to breed a Scott. The Lowland and Midland Scots
must always have been superior to most nations in feeling,
fancy and memory ; or else their land would not have
been stocked with names of places suggesting notions to
a child's mind, and with legends and ballads.

' See Introductory Note to Yanom Rcvhited.
a Rev. W. G. C'ookc-sk-y.

i87i] SCOTT'S LAST POEM :2'j'j

To lion. Charles Wood.

Dec. 20, 1871.

Don't you believe that I am settled at Halsclon, not
to go visitinor- any more? One can't afiford to burn the
candle at three ends — one end is Eton, one Halsdon,
travelling would be the third — and going to grand
houses is a sort of travelling,

When I became a householder I knew 1 was giving
up a great deal. . .

Would you have me waste this expensive establish-
ment, and disappoint the ancient cripple (recently
married) who, with much labour, has reared one
pheasant in a coop and kept about twoscore in the
woods for Elliot to shoot and for me to eat.

Think of the seventeen rabbits who are waiting to
be ferreted on some day of parochial festivity, when the
posse cojuiiaius will turn out with explosive pieces of
old iron and miscellaneous dogs, to cry ' Hey cock ! ' —
ask Freddy about it.

I have just been surveying my new brick wall, the
handsomest in this district, my goat (who cuts me dead :
she is called Dulce Doimmt)^ my two ducks, my trans-
planted birks and geens, my newly -imported polygonum,
Caucasian laurel, and quince trees.

To Mrs. Warre Cornish,

Halsdon, Dec. 26, 1871.

I don't know whether I ought to be pleased at finding
some stocks in bloom. With them, violets, and some
sort of daisies I make a show of florality, not to speak
of pots of chrysanthemum stuck on a tile to grace the
writing-table.

278 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [J

AN.

We all three rode Grizzle on Sunday, and she is sure
to behave well when she carries Maro^aret and Dorothy.

Fantails of the Sturgis breed greet me from the
dovecote when I go to see my little yellow pond ; and
the new weathercock, which my naval Lieutenant made
and fixed when astride of a perilous bit of thatch and
watched by curious hornets, is visible to my guests, but
not strictly veracious, they say. The bit of brick wall
with its toothed coping is quite the architectural gem
of the parish, and it gives me a very * lew ' corner facing
the east, which I want a plan for making comfortable,
formal and odorous. . .

I have just finished for the first time Eugenie Grandct^
and made a note that the end of it reminds me of the
end of Routola^ enabling one to see the nobleness of
Romola by contrast with the small-townish, old-maidish
goodyness of Eugenie Grandet.

To Rev. C, W, Ftirse.

Halsdon, Dolton,

Jan. II, 1872.

Anno Domini is a betise. Those that have reached
the 'Varsity latitudes are not the best judges of what
they are fit for : if a man is in a profession and is
called by competent judges to a particular post, he
may be sure that he is fit for the post ; it is not as if
he pushed for it. Lawyers never think themselves too
old for promotion : other lawyers know whether they
are sul)stantially strong enough. . .

I would rather, if I had the chance, rule or guide
a mixed body of neighbours . . . than be preacher and
director for the invisible or esoteric Church of * nice

1872] INVITATION TO IIALSDON. MUSIC 279

people': but I imagine this second is what you are
best fitted for ; and where can you have a better supply
of saints in silk than in Hrompton ?

I hope you won't take, like Gregory and Liddon,
to lecturiniT on history — stick to the pure John Wesley
stuff. Hagiology^ has nothing- to do with history, no
more than dog or horse has to do with the laws i)(
time. When the holy preachers take to theories about
economics they fail. . .

William Karslake defies me (politely) to write a
Church Catechism w^hich, substituted for the scholastic
document now" in use, would satisfy the W^esleyans
and Independents, whom, I say, the Established Church
ought to reclaim : but I am sure I can do it.

You should read the Penny Pulpit^ the back numbers
for the years — i. e. Spurgeon. . .

Did you read the will of Augustus de Morgan, his
expression of faith in the Saviour reserved till death,
because he saw that its utterance w^as a way of getting
favour with the w^orld and promotion, &c. ?

Never w^as there such a w^arning given to professors
of piety as that.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Eton, Jan. 29, 1872,

Generally if I spoke of music I should dwell on its
being the Ephphaiha for all. The violin in particular
is to me a symbol of infinity not bounded like a key-
board, not divisible into the octaves — one can imagine
it, in another world, keeping its identity but endlessly
extending its range, and taking our ears along with it.

28o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

I should speak of a melody as a Phoenix, dead every
time you shut the instrument, born again whenever you
will. I should grieve and rebel against the intrusive
tyranny of death in taking away the melodist and not
letting him share this often repeated birth; more par-
ticularly if a composer passes away before some great
improvement in the orchestra which would multiply
him in his consciousness.

S. T. C. has a fine mystic (unconnoisseur) bit about
music in the Remains.

P. S. Worsley has a most interesting little Words-
worthian bit of verse on music in his very interesting
volume of poems. Lady Eastlake's Essay on Music
struck me very forcibly at the time — ages ago. My
Journals have many a bit of romance about tunes.

To W. O. Burrows.

Halsdon, April ^y 1872.

Do you remember my talking to you about going to
Mr. Stone ? — you did not think much of it. Now the time
is come for thinking where you will go, for I am gone —
I have just resigned — ' turned out to grass ' — writing
formal letters till I tire, and now getting a change by
writing more at my ease to you, whom I love and trust
and long to see again. I could not be of much use to
you, not so much now as at first — and any other man
will be good to you ; but I think Mr. vStone would be
specially interested in you. My retirement will perhaps
keep you in his Division for another schooltime.

My successor will be Charles Everard, Escj., son of the

1872] RESIGNATION OF ETON MASTERSHIP 281

Rector of nurnham Thorpe, near Lynn in Norfolk, whom
I got appointed, knowing him well and liking him very
much, as everyone does. He has been taking the second
highest class at Diilwich for two years. I hope he will
take my lodgings — poor old trap ^ . .

The excellent pony is dead, we are going to bury her
in the lower lea, near the wood anemones, which are
now breaking out freely. Perhaps I shall be able to get
another — perhaps I may live to see Maggie ridden. But
I may, very likely, sicken for want of work : no more
scolding, no more punctual early rising. . .

I could hardly have lived through the summer half,
knowing all the while it was the last, and grudging the
days and wandering like a ghost in the playgrounds. . .

As it is I am bearing two or three days of sorrow,
after a cheerful, prosperous schooltime. I am so glad
you were sent up once more. Don't give up trying to
write verses, even though it be rather against the grain.
Having got so far you will soon turn the corner, and
begin to enjoy the ease of composing and the glory of
handling complicated subjects.

You will soon have a room of your own and get
away from the more childish boys.

I am too sad and ill to write any more. Please to ask
your father to excuse my writing to him formally.

To H, W, Paul.

Halsdon, Dolton,

April ^^ 1872.

I am not well ; and half my time I meditate the cere-
mony of dying, but the other half I bud with schemes
for the enjoyment of my liberty.

^ The 'Mousetrap,' No. 2 High Street, Eton.

232 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

I am as young as Columbus was when he began real
life. One of my notions is to take a lodging in Oxford,
or even, like W. W. Harvey, though with no Ewelme
in view, to enter Oriel or Corpus and learn lessons of
your great Professorate — a thing I have long wished to
do. There never was an old man so teachable, or so
full of forgetfulness.

Another scheme is to go to India and worship the
Union Jack in those famous but fetid towns of the
gorgeous East.

Another is to write a little book of Greek Iambics
and call it lophon. Nothing but the name would
carry me through.

Another is to teach Plutonomy to the Devonshire folk.
Anyhow, I am free.

To C. H. Everard.

April lo, 1872.

In any case it must be right to make yourself known
to the boys, to all of them, to the shy and uncouth as
well as to the enofaofino- and forward. Make yourself
known by telling them outright what you like, what
you hate, what you think about things ; e. g. on Sunday
don't hide yourself behind a respectable demure book,
a school edition of Zephaniah, or a family martyrology,
but take the plain Gospel, or a strong chapter of St. Paul,
and get the sweet voices to utter it to you till you are
by them moved to talk. Don't be always telling them
of the amusing mistakes that boys make . . . don't scold
one boy before all the others, except now and then in
self-defence. Say to a boy, ' Stop afterwards ' . . . there
is hardly a rebel that will not yiekl so. . .

Do not let idle masters run away with you. . . Don't

187a] LEAVING ETON 283

be too prudent : act on impulse for ^ood or for kindness,
never for spite. If ag-g-ricved by any one, write a good
long argumentative letter overnight — next morning read
it, and then burn it : it will be a great relief to you
Never grumble. . .

To C. H. Everard.

April II, 1872.

. . . has great trouble with his verses, and often has

to come for help like a lower boy. Don't be dry with
him. He takes a special interest in mechanics and
machinery. His greatest friend at school, I think, is
his old boys'-maid, who no longer waits on him : she
is a very wise, brave woman, and watches over him better
than any dame or tutor. I shall bore you often by
asking after him, since he is almost an adopted child.
He stays with me here and is perfect company, and
I have broken some heartstrings in parting w^ith him
as a pupil. . .

I don't mind flooding you with this transcendental
stuff about boys : you know^ it has been for a quarter
of a century characteristic of me, and it is no use to
vieillize just because I am grey and rheumatic. If I were
paralyzed I would still do homage to the simple sweet-
ness of good boyhood. . .

Ephphatha — utter thyself. Cast thy bread upon the
waters.

To C. H. Everard.

May 7, 1872.

You cannot be too careful in writing to parents.
Never use a vituperative word like ' idle,' if you can say
* not industrious.' This is a rule worthy of Polonius.

284 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

To F, Warre Cornish.

Halsdon, April 20, 1872.

It is very creditable to human nature that you should
take leave of me so generously, and I shall keep your
letter to sweeten the mind of any one that ransacks
my father's bureau when I am not there to guard its
secrets. I am sure that I have tried to avoid compli-
ments, being deeply sensible of my remarkable un-
worthiness.

I have at times tried also to avoid anything like
public action, being haunted by some words of a French
statesman which I copied out twenty- five years ago,
which say that before one undertakes to act on others
one should look to see what claim one really has, what
right to lead or to suggest. You have as much as any
one urged me to come out of my shop, and perhaps
you were right: at all events, I complied to some
extent.

I am well enough to do humble work in the field,
and to begin a little Greek Iambic book which may
be useful to some of you when you want to start boys
in that line. But my head is of little service in the
evenings. Last half and the half before it failed a good
deal at night, though I was more efficient in the fore-
noon than I had ever been. Sometimes I could hardly
keep off ' coma ' when teaching the nine ladies ; but
I finished their course. . .

I go under a tunnel : who knows but what I may put
my head out the other side, like the family ferret when
he has been after a rabbit ?

I meditate living with ]^>lliot in lodgings in Oxford
next October Term, and listening to Chandler, Stubbs,
Maine, &c.

,872] LEAVING ETON 285

I have many little schemes : but the most clear pro-
spect is the luxurious hope of seeing-, for the first time
since I was eight, these oak copses in their first green-
ness ; for the first time in my life the real country in
early summer — that is, seeing it leisurely. The barren
hillside here moves me to pity more than admiration :
nature seems unable to make a bountiful tangle except
of brambles.

I have a most interesting" kid, nine weeks old, called
Tetty, after Dr. Johnson's wife. Yesterday she was
with me some hours when I was rescuing my poor
young hollies from briars, and she had a surfeit of
sundry leaves, and a great struggle to ' chew it up,'
kicking out her hind leg as in a fit, and letting her
head loll when I carried her home to be doctored
by the universal genius Griffiths, who brought her
round soon : she makes love prettily to the ears
of a terrier, and is infinitely inquisitive and therefore
sociable. . .

I break my heart every day in the partings; and
I could not have gone through the summer with so
much sorrow — the lonely half- holidays would have
been insupportably pathetic.

To Hon. P. L. Wood.

Halsdon, April 9, 1872.

I dare say you have heard that I have resigned my
first and last appointment, and go back no more to
school — free after forty years.

I thought it due to your inestimable affection that
I should tell you of it. Do you remember May 1865,
when you came to share my invalid meals and made
me whistle old tunes to you in the twilight? Then I was

286 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

rehearsing for the second time — the third was at Scar-
borough— the sorrowful task now fulfilled of taking leave
of Eton boys and men.

... I am rich enough to live here, quietly, but so as
to receive guests staying here. I wish you would come.
It is the prettiest place in the world, pretty because half
barren and humble, and utterly unlike a smart place.
In short, it is poetical.

To Capt. A. H. Drummond.

Halsdon, May 17, 1872.

It is new to me to be in the country when oaks and
ashes are coming into leaf: it will be new to see the
wild flowers of the Jura in June, and to see the Alp
snow before the whole flood of British tourists comes. . .

I am really enjoying my liberty. I was tired of that
inevitable and manurious street, tired of being a ' myope,'
exposed to the fire of 900 young scoffers, but not tired
of teaching, and still, more than ever, devoted to the
few boys that seek me or like me.

To P, Warre Cornish.

Halsdon, Aug. 11, 1872.

... I have undergone a very strange wounding . . . :
I feel a wish to hear children laughing, and if I dared
I would try to get some one to bring children here
once more. Vis incdicatrix nalurae goes a little way
— not far enough.

I shall probably live here all the autumn ; but I don't
expect to live long. Meanwhile I wish to be a tolerably
good parishioner, which, perhaps, is easy.

Aingcr gives me fairly cheerful and very benevolent

i87a] TAKING LEAVE OF ETON 287

reports of the school and of the masters severally. . .
With so many good, high-minded young men, it would
be strange if the school did not improve.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Ai(g. 22, 1872.

I am now bearing solitude bravely enough. I get up
at seven, ride to post or pump till breakfast at nine,
read Tinics^ answer letters, w^ork at Nieces fourth
edition, or in the fields talking to the old men and
boys sometimes, bailing out punt, watching the ex-
travagant outlay on Lalage's^ raft, rescuing plants from
jungle weeds, using both arms alternately in hacking
at brambles. Indoors I read French in a sickly, hopeless
way, and go to bed at ten, tired, headachy, unfit for
sleep, haunted. Yet on the roads the farming-folk
speak up to me cheerily, and I answer them blithely. . .

To Hon. Alfred Lyttelton.

Halsdon, Sept, 7, 1872.

The vignette is very pretty, childlike, innocent,
delicate. Where is Edward's — where is Bob's ?

Mrs. L., staying here, says the eight ought to have
been taken together. Ainger gave me a little account
of the eight being together, singing, on Sixth Form
Bench.

Four hang in my bedroom — Charles between the
windows by himself; the other three are in a row, and
there is room for the remaining four.

Six pensive ewes of South Devon breed are penned
in outer hurdles, which I have been driving in before

1 The boat.

288 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

breakfast with the help of De Salis. They are sup-
posed to be improving- the wicket, and ever^^ day I shall
move the southern line of hurdles till they have got to
the end of the little lawn where it is level ; we have
1 20 paces of length from the house — enough for archer}',
and kept clear for it ; an iron fence parts it from a clover
field, called by the natives ' park,' of which a consider-
able bit is level. Coverpoint would be, as at Harrow,
on a commanding slope. Bowling for single wicket
towards the house will be safe ; fon\'ard off hits will
cross the iron fence, and drives ' on ' will cut over some
rather ineffectual conifers, hardy and scraggy rhodo-
dendra, straggling acacias and oaklets, and old roots
festooned with flowers — roots called here ' motes,' but
not related so much to the Scriptural mote as to the
beam. By perseverance I shall get a tolerable ground
for single wicket.

If you w^ere here now you would get birds : my guest
yesterday, in two hours, going over about thirty acres
close to the house, killed nine birds, though a very bad
shot.

vSturgis is on my Exmoor pony . . . wearing my
gaiters. De Salis guides him, mounted on a cob whom
we have underfed lately, as he was hard-mouthed and
enthusiastic on the roads : they are gone across our wild
moor to order baskets for a few water-plants which
are to grow in my small pond. De Salis and I have
worked hard to help to make a bigger pond, which
is to be fifty feet long, on a cold hillside, intended
partly for ice.

This country is scourged with floods, but has no
ponds: a very bad one for skating. On fifty feet one
can learn at least.

1872] IIALSDON AND ETON 289

When y(^u come in December the work in hand will
probably be a path through the coppice below this
pond, with a bridge over the torrent that will be flowing-
from it : for which bridge we shall use the oak which
we unearthed two days ago. This path crosses a ravine
with excellent cover for woodcocks, and here and in
other similar jungles, close to the house, we have a few
pheasants, of which there will perhaps be a few sur-
vivors, after Elliot takes his little share (he comes this
day week).

You will be able to amuse yourself, as he does, by-
stalking a wild duck along the river : we have thought
of a little decoy. . .

Lalage is lying under trees, waiting for her raft, which
is a grand work, constructed on plans and specifica-
tions furnished in a very businesslike way by G. ; the
whole thing is unique in our country, and is the wonder
of the loafers — vigilantly guarded by the millers hard
by. . .

I think I have asked about every master and boy
that I knew — and it is a very happy account of all or
nearly all that people give me. Sometimes I might as
well be holding forth in school : but the summer half
was a vexatious time for me, and full of ennui, in the
afternoons when I had no work to do and could not
join in the fun. WTiereas here I always have something
to do out of doors— and when I come in I write letters,
read a little, and do Iambics for a little school book
called lophon, which Ainger says he wants. . . I am
getting to know my neighbours, and have some faint
hope of being elected Guardian for Dolton, so as to go
to my native town and sit in council on poor folk and
(by the new Health Act) on stinks. . .

U

290 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

To Henry Bradshaw.

Halsdon, Dolton, Oct. 7, 1872.

I have ceased to be a Fellow of King s, as you may
have heard, having- enough to live on here, with a
prospect of a little increase.

I write to you chiefly to trouble you for the last time
about my Palaeontological Society books, of which there
is a volume now due. I propose to give them all to the
College Library — only, however, if you sincerely think
they will not be an encumbrance there. Should they
be useful, I should wish to substitute the College for
myself as a subscriber. I should also be glad to pay
a sum not exceeding £20 towards the binding of the
volumes as far as they are completed ; but I remember
you regretting hastiness in binding, and I dare say
there are ])ut few subjects completed without fear of
supplements. At your leisure, any time before Christ-
mas, be so good as to let me know about this.

I was very sorrowful when I gave up my books, but
I do not feel quite so much now in parting with the
College. I am healthier and happier, and more needed
by others, in this quiet parish near my ancestral town
of Torrington, than I used to be in Kings.

Perhaps it might have been better for me had I been
appointed Tutor at the time that I was willing to serve ;
but for the College it is better by far as it is.

It is very comforting to find that disputes are settled
. . . the open scholarships secured, the little addition
to the fabric nearly finished and sure to be useful.

The College is not cjuite what one used to dream of;
but it seems to hold a fair place, and I may, perhaps,
live to sec it grow into something considerable.

187a] RESIGNATION OF FELLOWSHIP 291

I remember with pure pleasure the many hours spent
in your hospitable rooms, which are, I trust, still open
to the young- people.

I remember also our walks and talks, and your constant
friendship, which often cheered me.

I wish I could hope for your coming- here when you
needed rest and fresh air. It is a place that charms
every one.

I have just sent to Rivingtons a little fifty-page book
for schools, called lophon, which has been revised and
approved by a clever Oxford man now in the house ;
but as he is an old pupil of mine, perhaps his opinion is
biassed. There are touches of poetry in it, not quite
so much as I wished. I was very careful in the use
of the lexicon, not having used one so much for twenty
years.

To Rev, C W, Purse.

Halsdon, Dolton, Oct. 13, 1872.

I cannot expect to get letters every day, nor do 1
wish for them, though the last week has never failed
in a daily supply of really friendly letters, which have
been a great set-off.

I am overwhelmed with letters from Kingsmen. 1
tell them I had no intention of ever holding any office
in the College since I agreed, . . . about six or seven
years ago, to go up to be Tutor, and the College
meeting voted against it, under the advice of men
who, meaning kindly, wished to keep me at Eton.
I should have liked perhaps, I tell them, to go up for
a term and give extra lectures or take some teacher's
place, but I explain to them that I have too much income
to justify the retention of the Fellowship.

u 2

292 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, Dojlton, N. Devon,

Oct. 27, 1872.

My butcher lives the other side of the flooded Torrldge,
and if any one came suddenly he would find nothing to
eat but salt pig and poultry unprepared for death ; but
the same notice that I always require for the mare and
trap would do for the mutton, as I can send a boy on
a pony five miles for it in an hour.

To Hon. Alfred Ly ft elf on.

Halsdon, Nov. 3, 1872.

I get to be afraid, living alone, of intruding upon
people. But when of their own accord they offer to
come here, as F. Wood did, they make me less sad ; and
when they come they make me talk and laugh as I did
afo retimes. . . You shall have the room called Stourton,
which has the things from my old spare bedroom, but
has no fireplace. There is a muzzier here with which
you can shoot the half-dozen pheasants that will be
alive then. There are said to be many rabbits ; we have
woodcocks sometimes — I have eaten one lately. I am
opening a new cjuarry above the places where I want
to use the stones, so as to save horse-labour. In Januar)^
I hope the buildings will be finished, and road-making
in full progress.

It becomes almost a passion with me to improve the
little place, to carve the hillsides, and make them enjoy-
able for people who puff up a slope.

It is not very hard to get guests in summer, as people
think Devonshire must be pretty ; but in winter I find it

1872] INVITATION TO A PUPIL 293

less easy. This week I shall be planting a little. I^Or
me there is always employment here, and I like sawing-
wood and carrying clay on a wheelbarrow better than
sitting in pupil-room. Health is a great set-off against
dulness. I begin to see that neither Eton nor Cambridge
was good for my poor body, which has greatly im-
proved these six months. And I find I like talking to
my old gardener, who can't read, better than to seven
tenths of the academical people and teachers. It is a
great blessing never to have to scold nor to set punish-
ments nor to whip the dead horse of inattentiveness. . .

T have Oswald's [photograph] up here : he goes into
a frame for a week, then into a drawer, to be replaced
by some one else : it always makes me a little less
sorrowful to think of his happiness and activity. Cer-
tainly phots are rare comforts ; yours in cricket dress
is very delightful. The four framed phots that came
lately from Hagley are, arranged by Sturgis, close to my
bed — Edward's nearest. I look at them piously. I shall
send him a copy of lopkon^ which is advertised. . . If
I do another book of Latin verses, which I might if it
were not for heartache, I shall call it Cory/eta, i. e. hazel
groves, something like Nuces, you see, but containing
my new name. . .

If you do come here, I will give you a present for
your sixteenth birthday. I doubt whether you will be
allowed ; there will be some wedding or christening to
hinder.

I have laughed four times, alone, in these three weeks,
a good sign of uzens sa7ia. The piano is all right in
a little downstair room. ^Sometimes I hear the domestics
sing, in harmony — good : the milkmaid sings at her
milking sweetly.

294 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [N.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Halsdon, Nov. 19, 1872.

1 read Dante o' nights with a real girl-student who
takes in everything. It is dry stujfif — but it is a sort of
reliquar\^ for the most (perhaps the only) interesting
fruitful age of the ' Middle Ages,' Francis, Giotto, Manfred,
Rudolph ; and yet Dante seems to know nothing of
the two blessed inventions of that age, the pointed arch
and the writing of music.

Somebody gave me a poetry book called Epic of
Hades. Somebody said it was very good ; it seems
to me below the standard of Eton boys' compositions
in Latin and English, and I begin to think that the
young men in England do not know what a good
l)Ook is ; they praise such stuff. . .

Maxim I. Ever^^ boy fit for a liberal education can
be taught equations. If he can't do them, send him to
the counter.

Maxim II. Mechanical arithmetic has nothing to do
with any reasoning faculty except attention ; but arithmetic
can be and ought to be taught as a kind of reasoning,
and those who fail therein must be made to feel they
are weak, and not allowed to console themselves with
success in languages.

Maxim III. A little chronology is necessary, but
an accjuaintancc with the kings of h^ngland and their
battles is not history of any real value.

b>nglish History is very important from Henry Mil
downwards ; before that it is much less worth study than
French, Florentine, German, Roman, Jewish, and Eccle-
siastical History.

1872] HANDEL. MOZART. GLUCK 295

Alaxiff/ Jl\ It is better to learn g-eography from
the blackboard (rivers and towns drawn before the
learner thereon), and by subsequent filling in of a skeleton
outline map from memory, than in the luon way of
copying a map as a picture.

Whatever you do, do not let this or that man introduce
new manuals every month. It is a foible of schoolmasters
to buy new manuals, and to assume that they act like
alteratives.

7V? A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, Dolton, Dec. 6, 1872.

I know hardly anything- of Handel, but I always feel
that his music is bornc^ like the talk of parliamentary
men and port wine men, like the heroic couplets of
Dryden and Dr. Johnson. Whereas Mozart gives me
the sense of perfect angelic freedom, like the best
parts of our 1 790-1860 poetry; like the pretty move-
ment in ' Christabel,' in Tennyson's 'Maud,' in Keats's
' Hyperion.'

W^hat I should like to be told is that Gluck lived to
hear Mozart's best things well performed, and rejoiced
in being surpassed 2.-^^ fulfilled, and to wish Virgil could
hear them.

To Rev. C. W. Purse.

Halsdon, Dec. 18, 1872.

* Everything is what it is and not another thing,' says
Bishop Butler in a note on one of those sermons on
Human Nature, which every Oxford man used to get
up, and hardly any one seems to remember. I wonder
whether Bishop Butler ever observed the bearing- of his

296 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec. 1872

axiom on the Doctrine of the Real Presence ? The
whole business of preachers is spoilt by not being
allowed to say that a thing is some other thing.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Halsdon, Dolton, N. Devon,

Dec. 25, 1872.

I had also just been reading about Fourier and his
phalanges, or Socialist convents. Now if Fourier and his
rivals had succeeded like the bees we could not be twitted
for the tentative struggles of statesmen ; we should be
boxed off in swarms . . . still you and I could not admire
and love mankind so much as we do now. Its very
failures endear it to a literary man. Is not this feeling
(Lucretius' pity for poor mortals) one of the characteristics
of literary men ?

If I had to preach I would take this topic, and argue
that our very failures in Church and State are a proof
of there being another world, or perhaps only a proof
of man being (as Pascal says, vide Hallam's Hist, of
Literature) a ruin.

The Duke of Somerset has by his rude and silly speech
disgraced the Whigs ; but a failure of Whigs attaches me
to the manes of Mackintosh and Macaulay.

So if I were a Frenchman I should the more tenderly
love France because of these many broken hopes and
schemes. . .

To H. O. Sturgis.

Halsdon, Jan. 10. 1873.

I wish you to interest your mother and sister In an
old scheme now taken up, I hear, ])y Cremer of the

Jan. i873] FOURIER. S. S. 'CEYLON' 297

toyshop, for iisinsr the sealed orraveyanls of cities as
j-)laygToiinds for very young children. You see the
crowdino- of people makes it almost impossible to get
playgrounds for those who cannot get so far as a park ;
and if we could have the yard, say, of vSt. Andrew's,
Holborn, we might keep out all roughs, appointing
a few verv old men, like Chelsea pensioners or com-
missionaires, to take charge of the infants brought to
them and left by elder sisters. We should have to
protect the innocent and fearless little heads from the
headstones, and the sacred names from their inoffensive
but roughshod feet.

There was a good old saint called Nilus ages ago in
Italy : he would not give his name, when he died in a
strange monastery, for fear he should be worshipped
after death ; he said : ' Bury me by the roadside, and
put a flat stone on me, that some weary w^ayfarer
ma}' sit and rest ; for I too was a pilgrim on earth
and w^eary.'

WTiat could one wish better for one's bones than to be
played over by a child of three that fears not, knows
not, death.

(W. J. travelled in Egypt this year with the Countess of
Winchelsea and her sons.)

To Mrs. Vidal.

100 miles from Gibraltar,
Thursday, Jan. 23, 1873, 2 p.m.

I dare say some of you may have noticed our ship's
name, Ceylon '. date of departure, Jan. i6 (anniversary of
John Moore's death) ; storms on Saturday and Sunday,

298 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

&c. The good ship, which is now in Trafalgar waters,
and is of the same tonnage as the Victory^ was in
extreme danger for four hours — the first four of Monday.
For on Sunday midday we snapped our tiller in a gale,
then twenty hours old. A young man here, who is used
to yachting, saw the event. I knew enough to see that
it was as bad a thing as could happen ; yet he slept
well that night, having observ-ed that she rose well in
the waves, never letting a sea break over the bows.
But at midnight it was, as the captain says, ' a first-
class hurricane.' He says five— others say four hours.
A calm man, who has been round the Horn and the
Hope, tells me he never was in such weather or such
danger.

On Monday, when the hurricane was gone — but the
gale was reigning still, we got round again to our right
course, against the wind, still in the Bay. I got quite
well — better than I was at home. That night I tried to
go on deck, and got a crashing fall ; but the brutal
thickness of my skull helped me. I hated not being
of any use — not even to the mother of a child that
wailed just outside my cabin. Finding our floor well
a- wash, I got up — I can't say I dressed ; I had never
altogether undressed since leaving the hotel on Thursday
— but I tied my air-cushion round my neck, put on my
boots, and sallied forth alone in some apprehension of
a bad fall in the dark. The first thing I found was
a stoo[)ing man. I asked him whether there was any
pumping to I)e done, for that is my forte (ask John, R. N.,
if it is notj. He miklly observed that the ship was not
making water. Then I stumbled over a great coil of
rope, but got on (kxk, expecting to find the crew at
work, but all sign of life was absent. Yet I was so dull

1

1873] STORM IN THE BAY OF BISCAY 299

as not to see at once that I was the* victim of a false
alarm. I was dull, as one is at that hopeless time of day,
just before dawn. I could see no sign of foundering,
only a sail huddled on deck : no boat carried away ;
stern seemed rather low in the water ; forecastle high
enough ; one sailor in sou'-wester creeping along the
side, going aft. I asked him, with my usual deference
and composure, what he was going to do. He said ' All
right, sir.' I went to the little shelter over the com-
panion, found a little ship boy as dull as myself, asked
him what they were doing. ' Shifting the helm,' which
in fact was all that could be said for forty -eight hours.
Then I sat down and looked at the twilight sea. The
only thing at all beyond picture was the little streakings
of surface in the long easy curves. It was rather absurd
to be so near Lethe . . . and yet feel just as leaden
and mindless and utterly useless as I ever felt at Barn-
staple when starting for Eton, at that same utterly hate-
ful hour (in winter). . . I was as well and ready for
action as ever I was in my life, though of course not
strong, having had hardly any food, chiefl}^ because the
steward could not get it for me. Anyhow I could see
that no water was coming in to put out the fires. The
engines were at work very tenderly ; the ship's head
was the right way. We had plenty of offing. The
gale was our good old gale, now seven weeks old, and
I had no means of finding out how soon the jury- tiller
was to give way ; so I went down to cabin and waited
for breakfast, very hungr)^ . . On that day there was
a six hours' struggle to get the ship round to her
true course ; for they had been obliged to let go the
rudder again, and point for Vigo bay. So that I thought
for some time we were going to demean ourselves to go

300 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

and ask the Spaniards at Ferrol to refit us. Captain
Evans, who says the voyag-e is — always is — a battle, and
enjoys it, stuck to his plan of mending ; and w^e have
now had forty-eight hours of goodish pace. As long as
the gale went on, he had a gang of sixteen or so men,
made up parth^ of stewards, holding on to the rude
structure of planks which, worked by ropes in blocks
from side to side of the counter, and squeaking dismally
on a wooden bed, serves as tiller. For a long time he
would let none of us go abaft the mizen mast to see
what was going on. When the stewards grumbled at
their hard work, and we offered to go for them, the
chief engineer, who sits next me at dinner, and is a
grave, grey, tender North country man, said mildly it
w^as an overthrow of discipline. . . People call the jur)^-
tiller 'the captain's baby'; and one man ventured to
' congratulate the captain on his ingenuity,' whereunto he
said, w^ith a grin that made three or four lines in his face,
roundish like a sea-shell, ' Aint she going nice ! '. . . Before
the gale died they unlashed and refitted with the ' gear '
the only lifeboat that had been at all hurt. This was
to me the first sign that the captain thought we were
out of it. To-day we have the Trafalgar sun, merry
porpoises, an ayah worshipping a canary which sings
at this moment, and sang also on Sunday. Fair weather
etiquette, Mr. B. pulled up for smoking on quarter-deck.
My disgusting dulness cleared off on Tuesday, when
I saw gulls ; and also imagined gc:)ing up to the captain
at parting to say a word of thanks or civility. 1 have
never spoken to him, but 1 have sat where I was sure
to see and hear him. . .

I was up first of the p.ussengers. It w.is the thing
I had looked for. There was a calm, and waters all alive

1873] STORM IN THE BAY OF BISCAY 301

with our victories The <roo(l ([uartermaster told me
I was half an hour too late : we had been close under
vSt. Vincent. I went to the bows, and by lendini^ my
telescope I got a lad to listen to me — an Aberdeenshire
lad, going to grow coffee in Ceylon — and told him about
the battles, and how I had been in San Josef, which
Nelson took here. Now we are above Trafalgar, and it
is about the hour of Nelson's death. I kept my com-
panion awake last night with a dozen stories about these
battles. There is not a bit of folly or failure all along
this coast : nothing but Rule Britannia. Last night
I stood silent, listening to six of our middle-class
passengers talking about Gibraltar. One of them served
as devil's advocate, enough to rouse the others ; but
eventually they all, from different points of view, perhaps,
came together emphatically, but with no sort of brag, to
hold it for ever. . . I think the Royal Navy ought to
know how excellent these seamen are. They get a good
deal of grog when at this hard work of steering ; there is
no sign of their being conscious of having had any unusual
pressure ; only a steward or two grumbles. It is quite
absurd to imagine any nation cutting us out. We have
Cornish miners and a chemist going to Japan ; a Lennox
of a ducal house going with w^arders to govern convicts
at Gib ; an officer going to Gib, with only one day's
telegraph notice from War Office ; not grumbling a bit. . .
No passenger grumbles. Men put their heads out of
their berths after four or five days' miser}' and say things
wildly ungeographical, but stoical as Chingachgook.
Kempe, a banker of Calcutta, sits next to me and break-
fasts on cold w^ater and cold mutton, after a five days'
fast, and talks of India with calm contentment and dis-
cernment, and the good English mixture of sensibility

302 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

with reserv^e. Another Calcutta merchant tells me
economical details, half a book full, about Bengalese
peasants and Scotsmen at home. The Scotsmen find
me as Scottish as themselves, and the Hindoostan people
nearly as Hindoo as themselves. Then comes a man
and tells me about New Zealand — two men, in fact. It
is a little live dictionary for me. Horribly stale things
I hear from afar when I am reading Balzac ; but I don't
allow any one to tell me stale things or talk rot about
modern novelists if they come and sit by me. I pick
their brains. During my imprisonment I could not read
much, but I got slowly through a pretty but feeble book
(English), Hotel du Petit St. Jean : you would like it
a little, but it is barley-water: Balzac's Cotisme Bette is
strong wine. When the boy was on the flutter I made
him some nonsense rhymes ; probably the oddest employ-
ment ever resorted to by a sentimentalist preparing for
death. Here they are ; they will do for Leonard ; —

' If you ever feel specially frisky,
And wish to do something that's risky,

I advise you to go

In a crank P. and O.
To face a sou'-wester in Biscay.'

To Hon. Alfred Lyttelton.

Ceylon (within twelve hours of Malta\

Jan. 37, 1873.

To-day I read our log. It relates events of which
I was not at the time fully cognizant ; but I knew the
main truth, as it was formulated by a good young
man, a ship-builder of Dundee, now recovering from
fever: 'If we'd been heavily laden we'd been all drowned.'
It was about four or five hours before you got out of bed

\

.873] STORM IN THE BAY OF BISCAY 303

for your first Greek TevStament lesson that the hail came,
and the pale blue h's^htnin^- of the real hurricane, not
altogether free from a ' stagy ' effect, to give us warning
that we were near Lethe, not far from the innocent
Arthur Raring and the tough Reginald Herbert who
went down inside H. M. S. Captain. . .

We were ' lying to,' — the log says ' hove to,' and no one
can tell me the difference, and I have forgotten the dis-
tinction once explained to me by the wise Admiral Wilson
when I was studying Smith on St. Paul's voyage : —
we were under steam, trying to keep our place, but
drifting, I believe, homewards. I had a compass which
told us at the time that we were going the wrong way.
The cyclone or hurricane, born of the gale, which was
born of Captain Rice's ' noser,' came on us fourteen hours
after we had lost the power of steering. Had we been
a sailing-ship we should have been ' pooped,' that is,
swamped by water coming over the stern in pursuit
of us. Had we been full of iron, say rails for railways,
we should have had water coming in and putting out
the fires, so as to leave us a mere prey to mermaids.
We were forty-eight hours without any trustworthy
rudder — eighty hours instead of thirty in the Bay.

I had champagne and a sandwich at noon, after the
cyclone, and that night, or early Tuesday morning, when
there was an alarm because our fore staysail had been
carried away, I was so much restored as to go forth and
try to get hold of a pump, the Childe having assured
me that we were sinking ; but a ship in modern times
disdains the aid of passengers till the 'stoke-hole' fills;
when it comes to that I believe it is time for buckets
{Kpcoaa(i)v aKfxT]. Ask Mr. Stone the accents). Till then
the egotistical engine does all the pumping — but it is

304 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

not quite such a Briareus (look him out) as to be able
on a calm morning like this to wash decks and wash
passengers at once. I waited a long time to-day for my
bath. On the Tuesday morning of last week, when the
gale was still as loud as Mr. Hale, I had my first break-
fast, which was the second meal since I lost you. After
breakfast the Attorney General of South Australia, an
utter stranger, observed with admiration and envy that
I had shaved, and ever since then I have been treated
by the passengers with nearly as much respect as
St. Paul was. Julius, that is Captain Alethuen, has con-
ceived a high opinion of me . . . because I have a
caoutchouc sheet, which supersedes all grumbling about
cabin turned into a ' morass.' This hyperbole was
employed by an old Etonian, who says he will never
go to sea again. . .

I have glorified the skipper more than St. Paul did
his : I have written a letter of thanks, got it signed by
an archdeacon, a live lord, a man from the Antipodes,
a Littleton, twelve officers, &c., and a Gourlay. This last
is my special friend ... he is introducing me to a cotton
ginner who lives in Lydia, and has beaten off brigands
from his house as we did when young in Guy Ma7ineri)ig,
I am to go, like Caleb the spy, and look out for the
upper and nether springs (see the Book of Judges) in
Ionia, and prepare the way for a settlement of 'lao^'€i^
tA\extVa>/;€s', i.e. graduates in Ulster coats, people like
Bob and the Shrew. Columbus and Lesseps, iivoiTi\Oixn\
began their enterprises at my age. I shall be the Ciodley
or Lyttelton of the valley of Hermus-look it out in
the map. There will be little Halsdons and Narracotts
with little partnershij)s. Some will grow cotton, others
vines, others sesame, others tig-trecs and drug-plants:

1873] PROJECTS FOR A COLONY 305

even^ month vvc will meet for Divine Service and the
comparison of scalps taken from those Carians on whom
we are required by the Greek proverb (apply to Mr. vStone)
to run the risk. We shall every now and then become,
in the words of Demosthenes, ' a prey to Mysians ; ' but
in the long- run we shall win, and I shall be worshipped
in a ///)<por, like the founder of Amphipolis. When tired
of the Rifle Rrig-ade you will join us. I wonder whether
I shall get John, R.N., my nephew, to come. I shall
grow liquorice, yXvKdav ptfar, which in England finds
nowhere but in Pontefract Castle depth of soil enough.
This will be our only luxury. People like Spencer L.
will patronize us in hasty visits, landing from sumptuous
yachts. \\'e shall take it by turns to go home and shop
for the community. It will not be a company — only
a neighbourhood made up of small partnerships, bound
together by generous academical sentiments.

I am writing a journal in which you will find no
mention of the storm. . .

Journal. P. and O. steamer' Ceylon,' ^7^2^. 24, 1873. —
To-day I saw Gibraltar after a week's voyage, fatigue,
danger. . . Journal does not receive tragical, dismal
notions, and I doubt whether, if recorded, they are trust-
worthy records ; for one dwells on them, shapes them,
considers their ethics, till one is not sure what was really
the impression at the time, if indeed there w^as a simple
impression at all. I wrote yesterday that in a time of
danger I w^as very dull, and that the dulness broke up
only when I imagined the parting with the captain, and
the utterance of two or three words of thanks for his
bringing us through the storm. _ To-day I acted on

X

3o6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

impulse. S. came to say good-bye, and I said to him
I had hoped the passengers would draw up a paper,
just to say something to the captain, whereupon I was
asked to write it, and did so at the hotel, and have to
get it signed. . . Nobody else would do it. I guess the
captain will laugh at our unprofessional compliment.

Jan. 25. To-day, just now, I have had my first talk
with him. . . He told me of Lesseps, the only French-
man who to his knowledge was out of the French
groove. Lesseps has no sort of resentment against
England for opposition to the Canal, delights in us as
the supporters, customers of the Canal. . . He delights
in our showing respect and tenderness for old races and
laws, as in Bengal. We ought to do the same in Egypt,
where the natives are capable of great things under our
guidance. So we are to keep up some leisurely dignified
life in the East, not of the common democratic type.
The world is not to be swamped by Germans and
Yankees ; not that he thought the two similar. This
was his peroration. I enjoyed it, my own notions
coming to me from a true man of action. I like to be
taught what I teach. . . How absurd it is to think
one knows one's own country if one lives merely with
Londoners, South of Trent people, and those whose
dinner at 7.0 prevents them ever seeing the sunset,
and those who habitually adjust the folds of their hearts
to the lines of their family connexions. These five days
I am a true Hriton, cognizant of its far-reaching, elastic,
productive, fearless, rational activity. . . Gib looked
quite ugly at first sight about dawn. . .

The sergeant-major, sent by the town Mayor, came
with a pass for the (Galleries. . . The sergeant was
of the 71st, a Highland regiment; called IMacklock,

1873] LESSEPS. GIBRALTAR 307

m.irricd for a yc.ir to an Englishwoman, ^lad to
live at Gib, would like to settle there as a veteran.
Spoke elocjucntly in favour of attaching a regiment to
a county. . . We talked regimental history, siege,
archaeology, tow^n improvements. . . It was pleasant
to find myself able to keep pace in walk, with talk, up
the steepish climb to the Galleries. They were just what
I expected, the more interesting because not yet enriched
with modern appliances, such as iron mantlets, trams,
recoil apparatus, hydraulic jacks. . . To the Alameda,
which was lovely with white sand, and white-jacketed
71st on it, doing the new drill. Edged it is with aloes,
red flowers and trees, with stems gleaming like birches.
Lord Heathfield, bless him, stands — only his bust,
though— on a pillar, quite absurd, but venerable. Then
past the Trafalgar cemetery, a beautiful, wooded, flowery
hollow ; then to the keen, bright, flowery paiio of the
Convent, now inhabited by the Governor. There was
the superhumanly big, ugly, vulgar, delightful statue of
Heathfield, in his pantaloons and bulbous cravat, bottle-
nose, gilt key pressed to his manly stomach. Behind
him in a little recess, one of his howitzers, one of his
box grates for heating shot, and some Spanish shells
hurled at him. . . Driven back in good time to the
Water Port. I got through a dense crowd and boarded
our P. and O. agent's steam launch, which ought to be
always used for the passengers. We wisely used it
uninvited. The crowd was inhiating and gabbling
over the w^ater, in w^hich were its naked representatives,
diving for a purse dropped by a very woebegone and
embarrassed but just-minded Austrahan. I could not
see half their faces ; but I saw it was a first-rate subject
for a painter — such a variety of attitudes and expressions.

X 2

3o8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

The divers failed ; but the agent sent for his professional
diver, and he did it for £2 — an absurd over- payment, as
the water was but eight feet and quite still, and the spot
clearly defined. . . As we left the roadstead the sharp
dorsal Rock looked much better. Perhaps I ought to
have known it would. It is the absence of table-land
and of deep complex fissures that makes it so unlike
other great headlands.

Jan. 26. Tangiers is as barbarous as ever, says
Maudsley, a pleasant, prosperous, young engine-maker,
who came on board at Gib. . . He says that the
Alcalde at Tangiers has lately cut off the hands and feet
of a man caught with a bag of money. The surgeon of
H.M.S. Lively^ to which he was brought by pitying
sailors, made good amputations, and they got him alive
into good quarters. . .

Jan. 2j. The pretty song sung by green and white
boys from the Oratory of Brompton at Covent Garden,
about Spring, has come to my sibilant lips to-day ; rising
one will never know how, from a palimpsest memory.
Is it because the weather is good enough for Godfrey
and Tancred ? I am on the seas of St. Louis, and
Charles V, and Dragut, and Collingwood. The Australian
betting-man came up to me and the parson, when standing
to contemplate our Arab fellow-passengers, and asked us
to join in a 'sweep.' Were there men of such leathery
foreheads and minds with the Sieur de Joinville, or with
the good Julius who was so courteous to St. Paul ? The
Arabs are cackling, feasting, even singing, seemingly
bargaining with one another about a handsome pair of
stirrups. They have one hag seated on a sheep-pen,
immovable, hideous, meagre, a puzzle to sailors. Two
men of her race cram her with cake. . .

1873] MEDITERRANEAN. MALTA 309

I sit perched up on tliose wooden pillars which,
I suppose, are meant to fasten haWvSers to. There I muse,
or whistle, or read Balzac. No lady speaks to me except
one — to turn me out of her deck-chair. I hear the captain
as he walks with his crack passengers talking banah'les^
from which I should like to rescue him. To-day I studied
the log" ; the word hurricane is not used, but the record
g"ives a clear sense of our danger. I don't know how
they ascertained in the dark what our latitude and longi-
tude were, but if they are right we drifted only a very
few miles when lying to on Sunday and Monday. It is
clear that had we been heavily laden we should have
been pooped, quenched, drowned. . .

[Malta.] y(:z;/. 31. I delighted in the view of Valetta
from the sea, a fine morning, grey and silver and delicate
green. On the rocks enough positive verdure to account
for the little flocks of goats driven by tall, silent herds-
men through idle streets. No one else seemed busy or
in earnest, for the carts were empty. There was no
building, no scavenging, hardly two street cries, no
fish market, plenty of carrots, broccoli, open red melons.
Jolly boys playing a sort of cricket with their hands — no
bat or stumps, but graceful catching and melodious
applause — close to g-rim piles of cannon balls and
stolid British sentries, behind the Parisian-looking new
opera-house, in which they were rehearsing Don
Giovanni. . .

In the courtyard of the armoury there was an in-
credibly magnificent display of colour from huge
creepers all round, and reaching high up. I could get
no one to name the glorious plant \ There was some
of it in the sixpenny bouquet of jonquils, geraniums,

' Bougainvillia.

3IO LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

heliotrope, and one white rose, which I bought in the
street, and having duly enjoyed gave to the steward for
the second-class passengers. Next day he ran after me
to say, ' I was to thank you for the flowers ; they were
delighted \' huge emphasis. It rebukes man s calculated
virtue to find that after cobwebs of benevolence swept
off, a single thread thrown at random fastens one on to
a good unexplored distant soul. . .

In the armoury there was good taste and the glory of
England, who faithfully treasures in situ relics which
France would have taken to Versailles. The one
poetical thing was a trumpet blown to call the knights
aboard ship when they left Rhodes ; but besides this
there was armour worn in real fight with the Turks,
and there was the original charter of the Order. . .

Alexandria. — Ibrahim, our dragoman, turned us
almost into live goods for the landing. We were late
for the train, and had to sleep at Abat's good hotel,
where gnats drove me out of bed and the floor seemed
to oscillate ; a hateful, squalid town ; but the white bells
of the datura and the red bunches on the pepper trees
were agreeable in the public gardens. . .

[Cairo.] Sunday, Fed. 2. We started at 7.30 from the
inn, and got to Cairo by i p.m. . .

Church at 4.0 in a room of the new hotel ; then
a walk with my Lady \ not long enough to get out of
the half- Frank strcL-ts ; yet there was a good deal of
real life to be jostled and stared at. . Then there was
the feast of l^^nglish newspapers till late at night. . .

The new magnificent moscjue - called after the destroyer
of the Mamelukes, a delightful paradise of cleanness,

' I.ady Winchclsca.

' Ibrahim Tasha's Mosque on the Citadel.

1873] MALTA. MOSQUE AT CAIRO 311

acceptable to those who in twenty-four hours «ire sick
of the foul streets. 'J'he great place under the dome is
all carpet, a world of chandeliers, bad coloured i^lass,
inferior decorations, but a grand architectural effect.
We stood some time watching the worshippers. The
muezzin knelt some way in front and sang the prayers,
dismally, deathfully, lunatically ; they prostrated them-
selves, and as we saw them in profile there was a little
want of unity in their movements, so that it was like the
breaking of a wave. When the singing was over, one
of the worshippers came close to us and prayed alone.
Sometimes he muttered like a man asleep, then he talked
as to a dog or a child, then he worked a rosary with low
reiteration of the same word. Very undignified, eccentric,
but unaffected. These men must be descended from the
horrible fanatics that Juvenal describes. After all, it is
a wonderful and great thing, Mahomet's alteration of a
national character, the complete obliteration of thero-
latry ; here we have the children of the dog- and
stork-worshippers capable of mental worship of the
Unseen. . .

One of our drivers behaved roughly and foolishly to
his horses ; but many people in the streets hugged their
goats and sheep and donkeys to keep them safe from
our wheels. I could not make out that they scolded our
driver, but I hated him for driving so fast through the
crowded streets, swaggering along in the service of
Franks, perhaps proud of serving a dominant race, and
perhaps glad to bring resentment on their employers.
Truly a moral w^ilderness, where Justice, if she comes at
all, is in a fancy dress. Can nothing be done but to
burn up decaying irrationalities with a blast of new
enthusiasm .'* Why not educate this race, once reclaimed

312 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

from a grotesque Idolatry, by the patient work of
magistrates ? Why not do for these Calrenes what has
been done for the Maltese ? The city Is everywhere
jagged and pitted with demolition. . . It is a thing in
which we differ from the old races, that when a city was
soaked with filth, as this is, they took a fresh site pretty
near, and used the old town as a quarry: we go on
building over ruins and setting palaces in a hovel
bed. . .

To-day I walked through Hassan's mosque, not in
slouching slippers, but in socks that once were white.
It was something not unlike a pilgrimage, as the mosaics
were shattered. Thus trod I on the blood of the Mame-
lukes, shed when I was a child. Not many Franks have
been In that mosque with a less Pharisaical mind. . .
This land has been visited by Herodotus, Theocritus,
Germanlcus, St. Louis. Great is the charm of Chris-
tianity, since It makes me think of this last man, more
than those three whose thoughts are my thoughts. The
saint would loathe me, Theocritus would be kind to me ;
yet I would rather have Louis here now to bind up the
wounds of these wickedly oppressed, meagre, brown
men.

Peb. 5. Yesterday we wasted the forenoon and drove
too late to the Hrldge. It was closed, that is to say
opened. . . The dragoman talked of Heliopolis and
the Virgin's tree. . . The sorry horses were whipped
the other way, and luncheon was put off till we were in
wildernesses, free from mortals. The cloud passed from
the brow when we came to a water-wheel. Every one
got down. We invaded not as snobs, but as poets, a bit
of garden, unfenccd, not unguarded. There was a boy
paddling (juietly in a shallow opalescent stream, one of

1873] CAIRO. IIELIOPOLIS 313

the oyi^dToi of Homer. It flowed from a cistern. The
cistern, flush with the ground, was filled with jug-is aqua,
which fell olittering;- from little twin pots, each the size
of an l^nglishman s hat, but shaped like a carrot tranche,
fastened to a wheel of wood, which was not strictly
circular and had promiscuous wooden bars and out-
riggers, and was cogged with a horizontal creaking-
wheel, which was turned slowly by an ungoaded, tall,
lean, spotless, unlovely ox, aged ten, which was watched,
not worried, by a turbaned blue man, who being asked
how long the ox worked, said three hours, then three
hours of rest. Being asked how long the ox would
live, said ' the Creator knew.' The dragoman said the
water w^as cool in summer, tepid in winter. No other
facts were forced upon us, our presence disturbed no
one, they did not ask for anything : this was good
Eastern life, the life of men who in their little time are as
the stars, unconscious, hasteless, steadfast. All around
this little spot of industry, groaning, creaking, painless
industry, there was true spring, marred by dust, but very
bright and bountiful. It was a delightful set-off to the
busthng idleness of Cairo. In due time we lunched
under good avenue shade, then we looked out for the
holy tree.

At last, after passing- a stupid inevitable obelisk, we
came to a second garden, where peach trees, meagre
and almost leafless, were timidly blossoming; and the
gardeners brought the ladies red and fragrant flowers,
not excluding some sorry roses, and shook a lemon tree
that we might pick clean little lemons. It was Pharaoh's
fig, under which the meek Magnificat woman is said to
have rested. . . It seemed rather a comfort, considering
all things, that the Moslem should do honour, actually

314 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

put up painted wooden rails to the meek, meditative
Jewess whom half the fair souls of Christendom love
reverently. I will call my next donkey foal Ayesha,
and if a male, Hussein, to return the compliment. How
vexed the good Mar^^ would be to know that she was
the stock to bear a Napoleon branch on August 1 5 :
that she was made Queen of Heaven by Manchester
curates. What idea of heaven have they ? Her tree at
On had a trunk shapeless as a Devonshire ash root, and
coloured like an elephant's foot. Out of this hideous
lump come four or five eccentric limbs fit for Salvator
Rosa or a nightmare.

To-day at 11 we were well on the way to the
Pyramids, caught the bridge in a moment of brilliant
inactivity, got under a hospitable acacia avenue. At
12.30 lunched under the hospitable shade of Cheops.
The sale of idols and the exchange of coins reminded
me of the futile creatures which moved indignation
and caught the physical as well as the rhetorical lash
in Jerusalem. They seemed spoilt by tourists ; one
fixed idea was to get from us by barter English
sovereigns to pay their taxes with. I gave them no
help, and got no information about these taxes. When
the sketches and bargains were completed, I was at
last able to stretch my legs and go by the east side
of the big pile to the Sphinx ; then sketching began
again. Then did our leader exalt the British name,
by quietly insisting against the vehement expostulations
of the verger, and climl)ing the Sphinx. He had bare
toes wherewith to scratch and squeeze her absurd
ringlets, 1^'ussy Arabs offered ropes and shrieked evil
omens. He placidly persevered, giving them little
volleys of their own language. He got to tlie top,

.873] PYRAMIDS. SPHINX 315

then clucked into what he said was a hole in her
head, about seven feet deep, then reappeared and was
saluted loudly by the functionary, who had meanwhile
learnt his name ; a man who said that he had tried to
climb up but had broken a rib, and that no one had
ever been up. . .

During the sketching- of the Sphinx we had a quiet
seated group round us, and I got some rational answers
about land, inheritance, taxes, emigration, punishment,
&c. The men with whom I talked seemed to like being
questioned carefully, respectfully, perseveringly, and we
thought they appeared to advantage during the process.
Then our encampment broke up. . . We got the
after-glow, and thought the landscape delightful as
w^e went home : the half- moon right over our heads.
Once more w^e stopped to sketch when a mile from
the Pyramids. They are not bad things ; they tempt
one to a slope from which one gets a new and
striking landscape. The plain with its streaks is far
beyond pictures. This then was a day to say grace
for. Memini mortuorum quia gaudeo. . .

Magdala Nile boat, off Abouteeg, Upper Egypt,
twelve miles above Assy lit (or Sioot^ or Ossioot), lat. 2"].
Thursday, Feb. 13, 6 p.m. — We began our long water-
party a w^eek ago come to-morrow morning. . . It took
us twelve hours to go the 1 20 miles to Menieh — a single
line, hardly any sidings, sugar-trains frequent and obstruc-
tive, no order, no care of passengers. . . On the road we
saw a noisy, cheerful train of fellahs going with their
month's stock of bread to do their corvee on the new
Canal ; no pay. . .

The poor people in the train bought w^hole sugar-
canes, fresh cut and brought with strident green leaves

3i6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

to the doors. I did not see any sale or supply of water.
We bought oranges and hard-boiled eggs. . .

I get up about 7>30, go on deck. Before the awning is
up I read under an umbrella with a white and gilt muslin
scarf {^s.) wrapped round my green Southampton
bonnet. 9.30, eat omelette, every day. Then I read
Plato's Republic aloud to M. Finch Hatton for his degree,
stopping now and then as in lecture ; after two hours
of it we go to Herodotus, whose account of Egypt is
naturally more interesting here and now to my listener
than Socrates' very elementary notions of justice. . .
After a solid luncheon, at which we drink Nile, tepid
and filtered and debateable, and make oranges serve as
wine, I read, perhaps with intervals of sleep, in my
cabin, till the sun burns me out of it ; then on deck
to get what I came all this way to get, the bars and
bends of plain sky, bank and stream, and the Arabian
mountains reflecting, and the Libyan mountains honour-
ing with distant shadow the sun that lets me with five
eyes see, perhaps, a minaret rising in a hedge of acacias
and palm some three miles off; perhaps a camel on
a causeway, led by a child ; perhaps a troop of goats,
very ugly lean things when near, driven home ; perhaps
the sloping yard of a boat, mistaken by me for the
lever-spar of a water-lift. Hitherto we have come to
steam engines for lifting water, not in use, and to broken
sakyehs, but not to the old familiar shadoof . .

I have been reading Victor Hugo's Lncrece Borgia
and Marie Tudor ^ Balzac's Pierrette^ Cure de Tours^
Menage de Gargon, having finished Cousine Bette on
board ship. These three last are not so harrowing and
debasing as Bctte^ but they give one a horror of France,
as it was, at lc:ist. I believe it must have been better

1873] LIFE ON A NILE-BOAT. BIRDS 317

since 1S4S, partly from the increase of prosperity,
partly from the superiority, as a gentleman, of Louis
Napoleon to Louis Philippe, partly the dying out
of the generation twisted earthwards by crimes of
Jacobins and Bonapartists, partly the improvement
of the preachers, partly the influence of literature.
This last, I believe, is in great measure due to Balzac,
whom I now recognize as the coryphaeus of Feuillet,
Droz, Gaboriau, Malot, Belot, Sardou, de Musset, and
Flaubert.

They have for the most part a lighter touch than
he has, and they surpass him in the construction of
a story. Like him they dissect their country, they are
professors of morbid psychotomy. I wonder whether
the intellectual priests, directors, read these books ; they
should do so. . . May some one arise to sweeten the
poor heart of France with happy books, forgetting the
guillotine and the Bourbons, and pointing to the cheerful
generous virtues of men, such as one may hope Lesseps
and Chanzy are. . .

Friday, St Valentine. We see and hear of no bees,
but we see the Turkish sweetmeat sold everywhere,
which is said to be made with honey. Wild flowers must
be scarce : hitherto we have picked one big common
red poppy, one little bell of white convolvulus, a few
dog-daisies, and a nameless white thing. Besides these
there is the yellow columbine in abundance. . .

I have seen what I thought was a butterfly ; they tell
me it was a yellow -headed wagtail. The birds brought
in are almost all beautiful, and to me new. The one
most remarkable is the plover, which has a thorn or
spur on the angle of each wing. Sand-grouse is pretty,
but not eatable ; lanner hawk, booted eagle, sand-piper,

3i8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

wild goose, kite, vulture, heron, are among the many
names I hear of things slain or threatened. If the slain
are pitied, still more is the captive. He is an eagle ;
he has outgrown one cage. When I speak to him he
opens his beak, and yacks like the young jackdaw that
I tried to rear in 1843 ^.t K. C. C. Romeo, the red
retriever, is pensive, gene; when he goes for a walk
with us he shrinks at the visitors, who curiously ap-
proach him, taking him for an English variety of
sheep. The crew like him ; it seems quite untrue of
these modern Egyptians, that they loathe dogs. Near
Damietta every man has his house-dog. The donkeys
are pretty, nimble, well groomed ; one at Assiout had
pretty housings and silver phalerae. The only one
I have ridden was perfect.

Feb. 1 5. To-day I had my third country walk ; it
took us to Abouteeg, in which we were surrounded
and stared at by hundreds of stolid, silly, ugly children,
partly kept back by a cavass armed with sugar-cane
swish. There were many pretty little bits of lattice-
work, architectural doors and windows, brickwork
cornices, a very good minaret, with a very good gate-
way and mosque, apparently on both sides of it.
Certainly more architecture to be seen than in a small
European town, but also more ruin, squalor, and
grime. . . I don't see any way of explaining the
extravagant slovenliness of the towns, except a survival
of Bedouin habits, e.g. the dirty practice of littering
the grain on a cloth spread in a thoroughfare close
to all feet. The delight in language lives evidently ;
the delight in fanciful elegant building lived many
centuries ; is it dead now ? The delight in cool, fair
water, in shrubs and flowers, in orderly children's hair,

1

1873] ON THE NILE 319

can it he bcq^ottcn ? They take pleasure in English
kindness ; shall they not soon learn our justice too ? . .

While waiting- yesterday for the sail-menders, went
for a walk, the skipper and I, away from Souhag- down
stream, to a very enjoyable moss-grown grove of acacia
and mimosa — real shade, coolness, greenness, retirement.
Saw shadoofs at work ; not even picturescjue, the lever
too short. They should substitute wind for men's
muscles to lift the buckets. I like the wheel with
buckets of the sakyeh, and if turned by wind it would
be a very sensible thing, much better than steam pumps
for this country. In working the shadoof there is a
waste of good strong arms, which push the rod down
to plunge the bucket in. I don't so much object to
the employment of women in carrying jars of water,
for they are probably happier thus employed than
doing nothing, and the climate perhaps supersedes
the need of many things that they would have to do
indoors elsewhere.

Fed. 24. The people eat enormous amounts of bread
and sugar-cane. I can't make out how they have any
money to spare for their coffee and tobacco : they seem
great feeders, and very well clothed, tall, healthy,
sociable — on the whole far above Kerry and Naples.
In Upper Egypt we have all liked the mountains and
the numerous shadoofs which creak soothingly all along
the banks. The steam pump here (this is a great place
for Frank fixings) works only in summer. We saw
a sakyeh at the ' Fisherman's palace,' and a pleasant
little girl called Rabba with shell strings to adorn her
hair, the first feminine ornament that has been visible
to me. . . I trudged after the family donkeys, to
Karnak, where we had a satisfactory hour in and on

320 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

the big stones, getting a good sunset view, down upon
the river and across it to the great Memnon. , . Our
party was highly gratified with the architecture. I prefer
the mosques : all the old things are too familiar before
we see them, and too far removed from the humanity
mirrored in literature. . ,

March 4. That night was my sleep murdered.
When I woke from my last attempt at sleep, it was
still quite dark, but the sakyeh was making distant
melancholy, bagpipe, humming-top, grasshopper music.
Donkeys were ready for three ; the purser and I set off
in haste to be at Philae by sunrise, breaking fast on
a bit of bad bread and half a teacupful of Marsala
drawn fresh from the cask. The donkey-drivers sucked air
loudly to encourage the quadrupeds, which were feebler
by far than their predecessors at Siout and Keneh.

We left the hideous human warren, following a fair,
broad, clean sandy trough with teeth of granite on
either ridge, reminding me of the hilltops in the Vivarais,
only much nearer to us. After half an hour's chilly
riding, the increasing glow showed us a little village,
and then the smooth river ; the rapids, falsely called
cataract, were heard, but not after the Ciceronian
Catadupa style — no fear of being deafened. The sun
slanted well upon the innumerable rock edges of creeks
and reaches, and told me at least that the island mass
over against us had no trees nor mud huts on it, only
the stately peristyles growing out of the live rocJv as
at the Acropolis — a solemn, clean, calm mass, but in the
dawn not highly coloured, not mysterious. I must try
to see it again at sunset. . .

To-day Hadji-bidge-bidge, the Herberee sailor, has
come to ask for oil to put on his sick wife's head.

1873] ON THE NILE. STARS 321

1 Ic squatted down in his white drapery while examined
by the Sitt throuo;h her son as to the malady. As Arabic
is not his lan^i^uaoe, it was not very easy talk. Two
interviews: trust on one side, patience and friendliness
on the other : no snivelling*. The Reis came to listen
to it, so did Mohammed, and a tall blue sailor who said
thanks for Hadji, leading- off for him. This they often
do, and we like it. After the aconite and the quinine
had been given, with clear orders, accepted with nods of
assent, the man was called back to receive a coin. He
kissed it, but gravely ; no Irish effusion.

Friday, March 14. One night I questioned our
servants about the names for stars ; they knew not
Alioth or Alcor. They call the Great Bear the
Seven Stars, also the * three dead daughters,' in which
calculation four of the stars go for the bier. They
could not say who the father was that buried the girls. . .
They liked being told about the moon. I have seen
two good slow meteors lately. . .

I gather from Ibrahim at least this, that the peasants
of Egypt are as likely to follow a Theudas or a
Canterbury Tom as any Jews or Kentishmen, and that
a m^'th or supernatural story can be as easily started
here now as in the age and land chosen by Strauss :
for he says that Achmet, the leader of the insurgents,
had a great character for goodness and cleverness, and
is believed to have taken his followers into the desert,
and there fed them with water from the rock and bread
from (?) , and that though believed by the Pasha to
have been slain, he is thought by his admirers to be still
alive: and that his brother, now imprisoned in Esneh,
is believed (on his own authority) to have the power
of passing from prison to mosque at will. He seems

Y

322 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

to have been arrested because some one lost money, and
the lock of the box and the lock of the room were
undisturbed, and this brother of the prophet was the
only man thought capable of working the mercurial
miracle.

Our parson does not try to convert our amiable
sailors, but he bends his black-clothed back in the sun
for an hour, working a piston in a freezing-powder
(saltpetre and soda), and he turns out lemon ice. Now
if Iris the daughter of Thaumas were to glance on
their souls, they would marvel at this prima facie
marvel of the ice in sunshine, and in due time they
or their descendants might wish to learn the explana-
tion : but as they take no notice of the ice, being,
I am told, quite used to the fact that English folk eat
ice on the Nile, there is a want of * opening ' for the
game. It is of no use seemingly to show them the
compass or telescope, or air-cushion ; yet they believe
in our doctoring. . .

When the fisherman brought us the turtle, he held
out his dirty hand to our Reis Achmet, who grasped
it, and then kissed his own : this is a real bit of
politeness. The greetings up and down this long
street called the Nile are as frequent and much more
cordial than the greetings in Trinity Street, Cambridge.
It is, as far as I can see, the bon enfant life here as
there — camaraderie — none of our social formalities,
inquiries after wives, &c. Perhaps it was thus that the
young men of the Piraeus met up and down the Aegean.
1 doubt whether the distinction which haunts people in
England, between young men and old men, is much
felt here. Manhood is the normal state. Once grown
up you arc chronologically cijual to any man, and

1873] EGYPTIAN PEOPLE. BIRDS 323

superior to the infirm. I don't see nor hear of any
notice taken of old ao^e, apart from authority on the
one hand, or mendicancy on the other. P.S. My
lady observes constant kindness shown to the blind
and also to bet^gnrs : she says they are never rudely
l)ushed aside, but pointed out to us kindly. . .

Siniday, March 16, not far from GlKGEH. — The
Purser has explained to me how it is so easy to get at
eagles on the Nile (other than fish-eaters). It is because
they must come once a day to drink, and there is no
other water. Worm -eating birds, such as thrushes,
are very rare here, because the ground is too dry for
worms. The Nile valley is the route for both migrations,
northern and southern. There are not so many fish-
eating birds on the Nile as in the Fayoum, where the
fish are incredibly numerous. It is inferred that there
are not many fish in the river. . .

Thursday, March 21 — 10 a.m. (within two hours of
ASSIOUT). Eg^^ptian summer is said to begin to-day.
We think it very hot, but have no thermometer.
Yesterday we had an illustrious sunrise, which glorified
the 400 feet scarp level strata, and one deep shadow
cradle of Gebel el Aridi. For an hour there was the
pink and glaucous hue on the hills, which melting into
the water reflections is, for me, a feast of beauty such
as I do not get when I look through other men s eyes
by looking on a picture. We rowed straight at the cliff,
and as we came nearer, of course we exchanged the
glamour of distance for the clean, bare quarry, and
the regular embrasures which stand for tombs, or
hermitages, or workmen's lairs. They were busy hewing
stone for building, but we heard no ' shots ' nor any
30und of tools. Sunset was nearly as good in the

Y 2

32-f LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

sky, and I feasted on it undisturbed in a little walk,
undisturbed by men, though the gilt green plain was
all alive with troops of cattle and sheep-drivers going
from pasture, and the bank with lively singing troops
of nimble people, towing big boats which were crammed
with cheerful creatures going home from their month s
corvee. . .

Sunday, March 23 — 9 a.m. (under the cliffs of
Abufeda). As we sit here, looking at cranes which
come within shot, taking a mean advantage of the
human Sunday, at a splendid osprey sitting on the bank
in perfect composure, kestrels and merlins popping in
and out of their nests, while ' Clebottle ' (Ibraham's
Cleopatra) the lioness Is playing with a soda-water
bottle — they bring us a dead snake, about eleven
inches long, found in the eagle's nest. We quote ' re-
luctantes dracones,' and now we wake the echoes of
the rocks so well stocked with raptors. . .

Cairo, Lady Day. — I call the Nile valley silent. It
is perhaps not what others would say, for the crews
chatter, and laugh, and sing. The Rels is sure to repeat
every order polemically and with vain scoldings ; at the
landings there are often hours of gabble and rowdy
importunity; add the dogs howling at night. But if
you think of other lands, you own it is a silent valley :
no fish leaps, of the hundred species of birds the only
speaking kinds are the plovers and the crested larks,
and in the spring and early summer it Is remarkable
to hear no song of thrush or the like: singers and
perchers are scarce where the l.uul Is too dry for
worms. There are no wheels ; no tramp of iron-shod
hoof; no rustle of wind, for lack of trees. The two
characteristic sounds are the sakyeh creak, which is

1873] SILENCE OF THE NILE. TRAIN 325

missino; for many scores of miles in the lower parts
of L'pper ]^2(rypt, and the chatterinof of villagers at
sunset as they drove home their herds. By the way,
the sheep, the g"oats, the cows are all without bells —
no fear of their being- lost, as there are no thickets to
hide them. Another thing that I do not feel so sure
of is this : except the pyramids, there is in Egypt no
sign of emulation. . .

I was very happy in the train all day : felt the heat
much less than in the boat, . . there were no flies and
little dust ; and I had brought water enough to wash
several times, using soap, having a towel. Hggs, bought
of an honest child, who w^ould not let me overpay him,
made, with oranges and Magdala rolls, a good many
little meals, moistened with brandy and water ; the
guard to whom Ibrahim had consigned me took due, not
too much, care of me, and we were not very late. . . The
little boys screaming ' moya ' (water) and holding up
their light vases, out of w^hich sometimes a dusty traveller
in dark blue surplice drank temperately, and seemed to
drink gratis — the disinterested brats that ran in upon
us from the cornlands, with no fence to leap, w^ith no
fear of by-laws or engines, coming just to fall into
the grandeur of a train, as the ship's nails fell into
the loadstone mountain ; the eager, hearty greetings
when people got out ; the absence of all slang and
swagger among the people waiting for us; the non-
existence of snobs and gents and betting-men, and
men with w^axed lip-hair ; the zeal of a lame man who
went to and fro crying ' hinna ' (here) to collect his
party ; the politeness of a man pushing back the w^ildly
fluttering white drapery of a ' hareem ' dropt on to the
mere desert in the midst of the breeze— these are the

326 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

images that I recall with complacency. They give me
the notion of a good-natured and well-bred people,
and they make solitude and inactivity and helplessness
far more endurable than I found them a year ago. All
day, when the train did not rattle too much, I read the
delicate sweet story La Mare an Diable, remembering
how my sister Fanny used to tell me of George Sand,
when I was a barbarous undergraduate. A great deal of
what I read now should have been read twenty or thirty
years ago. We are the playthings of ' Circumstance.*

Cairo, which bored me in February, looked last night
clean and almost brilliant, and the hotel received me
with serene, almost religious, openness — not the well-
acted empressement of an European hotel. I got a
northern room and revelled in space, bed, air, real restful
night and dawn. , .

My donkey was the most faithfully adroit of donkeys,
steering with the neatness of a skater, so that if I had
been blind and reinless I should have gone almost
without a bump: not but what the boy very quietly
interfered now and then with his rod, just touching
the moke on the neck to give him a hint, or speaking
to me— 'right hand,' 'left hand' — and the touter also
pulled me up or urged me on in the worst throngs.
The ugliest thing we met were camels loaded with
rough building-stones, an absurd substitute for roulage,
the more absurd because we met a long procession of
carts laden with stones. The sweetest thing was the
guiding of blind men by boys, on whose heads their
hands rested as if they were patriarchs, and their voices
fell gravely — the boys so upright and unobtrusively
useful.

We passed more than one school, but not at the jolly

1873] RIDES IN CAIRO. MOSQUES 327

hour of 3 ]).in., when they break off. The Wallace
Hethnal Cjreeii picture of it is better than any bit of
life I have seen in Cairo. . .

We overtook, twice, a hadji riding- in triumph, pre-
ceded by musicians who were more dissonant than the
worst baq^jiipes ; but in one case I welcomed the drums
heartily, beaten on the backs of supercilious old-maidish
camels. The pilg-rims were stopt by eag-er friends
grasping them and clinging to them, and making
them stoop for the hangings. They were easily known
by their strong, rich, yellow scarves. I regret to say
that this handsome bit of raiment was used by a
pilgrim's little son to hide his right cheek from my
glaring evil — shall w^e say eye, or spectacles.'^ It is an
amusing proof of the interpenetration of East and
West, that a hadji actually sends word by telegraph
that he is to be met at the station. . .

Thursday, noon. While reading about earthquakes
and thinking that Egypt has none, while Syria has
many, I received four letters which had come back
from Thebes. There was enough good news and
sympathy to add to the satisfaction of w^alking, alone,
in the Ezbekieh Gardens, which we explored last night.
News not all good. The road ' goes on slowly, another
horse and man wanted in spite of all our calculations.
I suppose the snow is given as the cause. I must give
up Turkey, buy no more things here — give up the
little plan of fetching my old companion to meet me
in Germany. . .

It is the plague of mosque-seeing that you go with
a guide who does not care for the thing except as a
thing for him to show, and that the holy places are

^ At Halsdon.

328 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

entered only by help of officials paid to guard you from
the spite of the worshippers, that is, of the very people
for whose sake you respect the buildings, and to whom
you would wish to be as a turtle-dove. Moreover, I wish
there were not so many blinking, dull eyes. I don't
mind a sprinkling of real blind folk, whose presence in
the crowded lanes is a precious sign of the people's
gentleness, but the amaurosis is mean and dismal.

Abat's Hotel, Alexandria, Saturday, March 29,
Sunset. — Hard packing, good exercise, hard reading of
papers. Relieved by finding that the Tories disdain
floating into office on the swoln carcase of an Irish
grievance. My guide dashed at me when I had paid my
bill and boarded my carriage, and was very useful. He
was amused at my preaching silence to the vociferous
officials of the luggage-office. . .

March 29. Booked by my old enemies, Austrian
Lloyds (whoever they are in the flesh), once more. They
are to take me to Smyrna. . .

I went to a cafe kept apparently by a solemn pelican,
who moved his absurd bill like a prosy pedant : some
poor girls fiddled, and inside I was their only listener,
for the two Arabs talked all the time. There was one
waiter outside, one 7iarghilly in action, one set of
dominoes. The sea breeze was marred with the dust
of fiddle-faddle stoneworks, just as the music was broken
by the few and futile hammers, and the wind lifted the
inconvenient draperies of the workmen on the roof.
Then and there did I reach the climax of contempt for
Frankified, Turk-ruled Egyptians. No esplanade. The
ground that might be healthful is taken up with barracks
and batteries, so that the man of peace must trudge at
the back ditch out of sight of the sea. At three breaches

7873] ENGLISH AT ALEXANDRIA 329
i__

I took up my much-enduring- glass, and did justice to
Pharos and Lazaretto and die curve of land which seems
to shelter the roadstead from the NW. ; but I could see
no ships, and for all I know there are ships on the other
side, sheltered from the SH. ; so in doubt I mused on
the sagacity of Alexander, and pitied Theocritus and
St. Mark.

The inn is full of Britons from India, Australia, and
China : they have been detained in the Canal by wind
which blessed me on Monday, so they are waiting- for
the next P. and O., and the patio is alive w^ith pale
children. I have opened the first parallel for storming
their hard little hearts by bringing them some very
expensive and presumably stale macaroons and chocolate
lumps, and I expect by Monday to be allowed a ride
on the stone lion, which reminds me, in point of size, of
the lost Clebottle. There is an American here who
shouts with a long-range voice, and breaks in upon our
superior conversation : whereupon I turn two points,
and listen to ladies talking about the small feet of their
Chinese maids and of the rudeness of the Alexandrians,
who make the faces that grow out of these small feet
blush — a good illustration of Darwin's essay. . .

To-morrow back into the anchoret life, which is my
portion. I have at least taken in a little store of English
sweetness, and my last night in Egypt has been a feast
time.

. . . Took a walk and intruded into a fort and
saw Mizraim s troops learning their lessons ; rather
politely turned out after a pleasant w^alk through clean
barrack-grounds, with more verdure than I found else-
where. Thus, as long ago at Salzburg, I rubbed out
a general disgust by blundering at the last moment on

330 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

a nice place. My last impression of Egypt but one, is
respect for docile soldiers and patient officers : the last
of all is contempt and abhorrence for the fools who
scrambled for my luggage at the waterside, and for my
snivelling dragoman, who tried to get me to pay him for
my walk with C. when he was in C. s service — putrescat
in senectute turpi. My ship Apollo was swarming with
fez-wearing Franks and Turks, taking affectionate leave
of young coin77tis-voyageurs^ who were quite inoffensive.
. . . There was a great display of good feeling w^th no
snivelling. When we started, Boreas fell on us, and
gave us hardly any rest till we anchored in the little
harbour of Chios on the third night. Our fool of a captain
would not, by giving timely and true information, enable
us to go on shore to see the island. We might have had
four good hours of morning in Homer's own valley s»
while five thousand boxes of fruit were coming on board.
Rhodes we passed at night. Patmos we saw w^ell, and
a bold, bleak, rugged thing it was. Our officers were
never to be got at ; we were in a poop island over our
saloon, locked off from the officers' bridge. The govern-
ment of the ship was felt and heard only through the
dismally clanking chains of the rudder, which passed on
each side of our marine parade. No man at the wheel :
the wheel was in a bag. Twice only did I see sailors at
work. . . I suppose the Austrian Lloyds have found by
wearisome experience what bores passengers are with
their questions, so I who bore no one with questions,
suffered for the glossalgy of others, and missed the
little pleasure of seeing blue and brass doing its
duty. . .

The wind, unruly as it was, did not quite spoil the
glitter of Alexandria, the cyancan lustre of the sea that

(Rt:-;] AUSTRIAN LLOYDS. CHIOS. SMYRNA 331

once bore the <Tood ship Dioscuri on her way to Myra.
Perhaps it blew as hard when the Venetians tried to
brino; away St. Marks bones from Alexandria. . . The
i:;-lory of our company was a comely German in the
prime of life, red-blonde and genial, Dr. Hackel of Bonn.
Hearinorfrom Leitner that I read Darwin, he came to me,
knowing hardly any English, to show me his Darwinian
picture of four embryos — turde, (?) , dog, man— and
his ' hypothetical sketch ' of the radiadon of human
breeds from the one centre, ' Lemurien,' which is placed
in the sea between India and Africa, somewhere about
the Seychelles, he puts Paradise with a '' ? " . This
was a man truly in the prime of life, bright and happy,
enjoying his mind, feasting on perceptions. I liked to
see him talk when out of range. That is the one im-
pression of the three days' voyage to be hoarded. . .

Haughton the Yank said that Agassiz, whom he claims
as a citizen, being asked whether he w^as saving any
money, answered that he w^as too busy with his researches
to spend a day on making money. Inexorable death
urges these thinking men to be quick, and some of them
are but too quick, and do their tyrant s work, shortening
their wofully short lives by their impatient straining.

And all the while the prudent good men, who ensure
by piety against risks beyond the grave, are sighing the
sigh of the Pharisee over these uncalculating, disinterested
lovers of truth. Surely the philosophers are less worldly
than the religionists. . .

Smyrna, H6tel de la Villr, Sahtrday, April 5,
7 p.m. — There is no public library. I have asked T.
to get leave for me, as a Greek scholar, to be present at
a Gre<:k lecture in their college. He promised it. This
perhaps can be accomplished. I want to hear a Greek

332 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

recite Demosthenes. I think that the Greeks have not
our knowledge of authors : they may know Homer,
Pindar, Xenophon, Thucydides, Demosthenes ; no more.
The best professors of classical Greek here and in
Greece have been trained by Germans.

Ephesus, Sunday, April 6. — Worship In the Con-
sulate, close to cheerful sea and vernal shrubbery, swarms
of young- women, plenty of singing — the first since
January. I sat alone on a free bench near the font,
but was invited by the Consul to the first row, and the
parson left his desk during the Veiiite to get me a big
prayer-book, which he sent me by a beckoned boy —
overwhelming attentions. I had my American prayer-
book all the while, and showed it. People always
oppress me with books In church, and give me no credit
for knowing the liturgy. I only wish they were equally
pressing with newspapers and maps. . .

I wandered two or three hours at random by the sea-
side, along the railway which seems the only promenade
for the common people, and is fringed with humble
drink-gardens, in one of which there was a boy playing
a harp as tall as himself, and singing to it, simply, not
badly. Everywhere there were merry children flying
kites. . . Here and there I saw a child or a woman in
a strong, over-deep blue dress — not relieved — otherwise
all was in quiet, good taste. It seemed all over the town
a sober, sociable, humdrum set of people ; nothing noisy
but our few sailors.

On coming back to enjoy the sunset and sea-breeze In
my great chair, I liked looking at my neighbours on the
flat roof of the l^ortuguese Consulate. Two girls of seven
or six flying kites, (juite within pea-shooting and talking
distance, and on my level, and taking no notice of my

1873] EPHESUS. ST. LUKE'S TOMB 333

mysterious drcssinq--^o\vn : wherefore I write clown my
cloo;"q;rcl and read L' Enfant Alaudit^ and feel con-
tented. . .

Tuesday, Ap7'il 8. — I have just given up the twih'g-ht,
and lost the delightful chattering- of the Portuguese
children. They have been skipping over a long rope,
and masts and sierras were in the background, and their
pleasant faces were visible across the little lane because
of the sunset. Three children, and at noon I had
watched three birds sitting on the telegraph-wire — two
good sights in one day. Why grumble ? . .

I went off w^ith my Geneva leather cup in the hope
that the old guide — the only one there was — who was
described by Mrs. Wood as fit only to prevent my
tumbling into pits, would find some water in the swamps,
where Wood says he has seen the ' Caystrian swans.'
I took a few^ cigarettes with me to propitiate barbarians ;
I was heavily laden with my whole stock of gold, not
knowing where to leave it ; had no umbrella, no know"-
ledge of the guide s lingo, modern Greek ; in short,
things looked unpromising for the six hours to be slain
before I got to the Woods' dinner. . . I dare say I missed
a good deal, but I saw more than I expected. The
perfect cleanness and crystal sparkle of the marble, and
the undefaced cross and bull on the doorpost of what is
called St. Luke s tomb ; the splendours of the syenite
pillars elsewhere; the supposed 'Baptistery' — a big,
shallow basin more or less blackened, highest in the
middle, and with smooth rims . . . the perfect sharpness
and cleanness of the inscriptions ; the singular boldness
and nobleness of the rock-ridge on the south-west of the
theatre, with its spirited outwork capped by a fort ;
the old man's cry of ^dAao-o-a (not ^aAarra), when we had

334 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

climbed to the right place above the theatre ; the
children and sheep shyly grazing in the little plain,
where silt and swamp cover the homes of those noisy
silversmiths, and hide the houses which Paul visited as
a parish priest ; the owl [coiicoubain) which flew out of
the 'Baptistery ' ; the silent shepherd with noisy o-KvAdKia
who dwelt in the supposed palace of the governor ; such
are my crumbs of remembrance. Once I left the tired
old man, who had slipped and laughed at his falls more
than once, to smoke and sleep in a hole that may have
been once a place of rest for a tired actor, while I sat
looking seaward, wondering at the strangeness of the
site for the capital of the great Roman province, and
running over the little string of reminiscences from
Horace to the sentinel and the widow of whom Jeremy
Taylor writes in his Holy Dying^,

Malaria, due they say to Cayster, due no doubt to
Turkish laziness also, perhaps also to the earthquake
which I suppose overthrew the temple, has given up to
perfect, holy solitude that southern or south-western side
of the city which, on account of the port, and the road
to Miletus, and because the theatre faces south, one
associates with St. Paul ; although the Christians seem
to have buried more away to the east and more within
sight of the village and mosques. However, even their
cemetery is secluded enough, and the pious visitor
cannot be disturbed at i^2phesus by the intrusion of
alien things, as I imagine he is in Jerusalem and Rome.

I rememl)cred how poor W. H. Scott said to me,

* From what place shall I write to you on my tour ? '

and laughed with surprise when I said ' i^^phesus.' At

that time it was but little thought of. I did not know

* Chap. V. Sect. viii. (p. 447, Edition of 1850).

'873] EPIIKSUS. EARLY CHURCH 335

any one then who seemed to see that It was a very good
place for the Romans, and the most purely glorious,
happy place for Christians — those few chapters of Acts
are of quite primary importance in the history of the
Empire and of the Church — and I can't think of any
ancient city so little mixed up with crime, horror, failure,
mythology. Why is Timothy forgotten there when
Polycarp is grafted on it, and St. John's house is shown
in the village ? I wish also there were some traces of
Cicero. They are taking away, and I saw at the station
just where at home you might see portmanteaus, a well-
cut monument of the Calpurnian Gens, which reminds
one of Caesar's wife and of Piso the enemy of Germanicus.
I had just got as far as rrivov -nap TtOTafxov in the elegiacs
of the stone when the train claimed me, and I must look
in Wood's book to see whether the verses written for
those Romans are as good as I am said to have WTitten.
It is egotistical, but Innocent, to mention here that I have
with scholars a special reputation for Greek elegiacs,
the very form of verse w^hlch belongs to this pretty
Ionia : and In a lukew^arm way I communed to-day w^ith
Mimnermus and Callinus, just as I did yesterday with
St. Luke : but of all who ever wrote at Ephesus, Cicero
and Horace probably would be most civil to me and at
home w^ith me — yet I like that ' town -clerk ' too.

On the way home NIcholay tried to please me by
showing me plants, such as 77taguta (angelica plant,
yellow flowers used to make absinthe in France)— its
fennelesque stems made a painful squeak, like a hurt
animal, when stepped on ; origano (pure Greek), which
I find Is marjoram ; aperia^ which is apricot ; sicolea^
which I think Is something like mastic ; but he could
not show the valo7tia^ nor give me the Greek names of

336 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

the conspicuous squills, Agmts castzcs^ and hawthorn.
In birds he was stronger ; he said the cuckoo would
come soon. About once in three times my suggestion
of a Greek name answered ; and sometimes, as in Jido
for a snake {6(pLbLov), I made a good hit in recognizing.
... I could not get Nicholay's names for poplar and
nettle. He was a nice old soul. I think he sympathized
with me, because, like me, he had ' no boys, no girls, no
madame.' . . He seemed sheep-like enough to suit the still,
sacred, green wilderness ; he shook hands to-day at part-
ing, even like an Arab, but with more meekness. And
Nicholay is a good name — as we were not from Myra —
and it reminds me of my colleges and my profession.

Wednesday^ April (), lo a.m. Too tired last night to
go on with this ; eleven hours in bed. I have now made
up for the want of rest in S.'s room, which he gave up
to me, in which, after slaying a black bedfellow, I read
L' Enfant Matcdit^ and smoked, and sprinkled eau de
Cologne, and listened two hours to the solemn bac-
chanalia of the sailors. Of their songs not one had
a real melody to be remembered ; but all were slow,
straightforward sequences, so that men with no ear
could join in the refrain. One was the autobiography of
a pirate — not so simple as Hybrias the Cretan ^; another
seemed to be cheerfully erotic, and in the burden, which
was all I caught, there was a touch of fancy :

' We'll kiss them . . . till they
Will fly with the morning lurk, whistling away.'

In this line there is that most rare and charming cadence
that haunts one in the last line of ' The Soldier s Dream ' :

* And the voice in my dreaming car melted away.'

' Bcrgk Poet. L3'r. Gr. Scolia^ 27 :

tan fioi ttAoCtos /xiyai djpo /cot ^lOoi, Sec.

1873] TURKS, ROMANS, AND CHRISTIANS 337

The Turks in their day must have had virtues : let
their monuments stand. No doubt I claim Ionia for
the successors of the Romans, who took it lovingly
from aiul with the Greek inhabitants. First came the
Catholic Pauline Church to inherit from Cicero and
Brutus : legitimate inheritance ; ' for first in beauty
shall be first in might.' But the Osmanli conquerors
were, I imagine, to the formalized Byzantine Christians
w^hat Cyrus long before was to the Phocaeans, what
Scipio Asiaticus was to Antiochus ; now the Franks,
headed by England, are to Greeks, Turks, Jews, and
Armenians w^iat Romans were to those who were
beaten at Magnesia, and rose under Mithridates. Let
us rule ; let us, here as in Delhi and Valetta, respect
and cherish the trophies of masculine hordes and dis-
ciplined believers.

And when Ionia is delivered from corruption and
polygamic scrofula, let us bring back the fair carven
stones from London, and set them up again where Paul
and his elders read their handsome Greek letters. . .

I wished for a geologist, to talk of alluvium and
earthquake, &c., but the lieutenants were as dull as
cricketers. . . I should like to go again with H. E. L.
or H. M. B. or M. F., my tried and perfect companions.
But as it was I did well ; it was for me what would
have made a book of the Excursion for my master,
the poet who knew no Greek. It was a day to set
down among my jewels with the Dryburgh day. . .

Here grew big old planes, with strange distortions.
I think they were the only set of trees that justified
the grim old German drawings of woodland and hermit
haunts. Near them, sometimes blended with them for
art purposes, w^ere overhanging rocks — results of land-

z

338 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

slips, as in Borrowdale — mossed, lichened, knotted,
grotesque. All this one gets touched off, with one per
cent, of the details given, in bandit pictures and diablerie
illustrations ; but these Ionian stones were without
holly, ivy, fern, soft moss — therefore more true bits of
coloured altered rock, stratification and cleavage, as far
as I could see, almost lost (not but that higher up there
was plenty of schist). The Grenoble rocks alone came
to my remembrance on seeing these. I must again resort
to negatives — there was no heath, pine, bramble, gorse.
Limestone it w^as, but not glaring as in Jura, nor
streaked with marble as at Syria, nor beautified by
myrtle or bay. I saw the bay, and smelt it with joy :
also oleander close to the water (not known to Nicholay).
I had been told to look out for, but did not see, arbutus,
laurestinus, and myrtle. Well, this zone of planes
(not the symmetrical stately planes that I expected) was
more quaint than beautiful. Above it, where the path
wound about and the glen folded itself like a scarf of
many hues, I saw the new enchanting ' sparto ' — not our
broom with its handsome green needles, but a dwarf
thorny plant, growing like our stunted hedgethorns in
North Devon, sometimes blended with a fine big white
cistus, but for the most part acting alone to my eyes,
lighting up the grey and the dull green sprinkled upon
the poverty of the hillside, catching the forenoon sun at
a thousand points, itself less lavish of gold than our
broom ; nor can I be sure that it was the very same
yellow — perhaps less brilliant, but it was in the highest
sense poetical. Nothing ould be more likely to make
me sigli and murmur for the Tifxijeaaa x^P'''^ ^avOolo
KUfnjaTo^'.

Too late for the bluebell and anemone ; disappointed

*

1873] EPIIESUS. FLOIVERS 339

about flowers, thouq^h a little g-irl in the villai^e let me
look .at her kritw, a beloved white iris. I had forg-otten
tlie old man, and he had said nothing for some way.

Did he hear me talking to ? He turned and said,

* Boys and girls at home — got any ? ' What made
him ask that question then ?

Wednesday^ 7 p.m. I found donkeys instead of horses,
and a very dull, dusty road to Bournabul ; dear at two
shillings an hour besides guide. My plan was to go
into the uplands. In going up, my poor beast slipped
and could not rise till pulled ; so I concluded he was not
fit to go up mountain -tracks, and in dudgeon turned
back. Giacopo, Spanish Jew, who knew the date of his
forefathers' expulsion from Spain, had the wit to take
me back by the old road. It had a causeway of rough
stones, not half so rough as Smyrna streets — on either
side, soft earth to ride on. Seeing that I wanted flowers,
he got me some, amongst them a bulb root of zimbook,'
which has more resemblance in stem than in flower to
bluebell, a welcome dogrose, myrtle leaves, poppy,
may in full bloom, anetho (dill ?), ' metapero ' — lavender-
coloured shrub, very pretty ; of this I try to save cuttings.
We stopped at Diana's Bath, where the delicate poplars
just coming into leaf, and low walls covered with an
ivy less dark and less veined than ours, led me to a mill,
and a place for drying fleeces on frames of sticks high
as hop-poles. We were let into the garden, which was
well watered and enjoyable, full of monthly roses. They
picked for me the best, whitest laurestinus I ever saw ;
long light branches of big, soft, open, pale banksia rose,
called * bomboni ' ; one perfect red rose, wisteria, orange
flower, and noble lilac iris. So on the way home I was
mocked by the stupid loungers, and followed by a few

Z 2

340 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

jolly children asking for flowers, and getting some. The
ride cost me a Napoleon ; very extravagant ; but now
I have seen a country lane in Lydia, and the slanting
sun made the plain pleasant. The road turned at a
right angle w^estwards, and took me to the well-known
cemeteries and caravan bridge. Wearisome and unsafe
riding through the streets.

Thursday^ April lo. These foreigners see not so
much one thing as one man at a time: now it is
Napoleon, now Bismarck, now Gambetta : only one man
at a time. In this are the Americans wiser ; though they
seem to stake all on a Grant or a Davis, yet their
thoughts run habitually in broader channels. The trick
of simplifying, formulating, political theories is one
which even in England we have to guard against. I
always did so ; and had I lived where I had an audience,
I might have done some little service by teaching young
men to disentangle the coincident lines of unequal length
and thickness. . .

In these talks I feel, wearily, the inadequacy of the
French language for politics : the ' position nette,' the
recurrence of the inevitable phrases ; all that the sagacious
Knyvett Wilson used to point out to me as their weak-
ness. ' Pcrsonne moins pretre que Jesus Christ ' — frag-
ment of the Dutchman's discourse on reliofion. Christ,
he thinks, remained a Jew : taught that all were equal ;
Constantino would not tolerate a republican religion,
took up a hierarchy exactly corresponding witli the
imperial system.

This clever old fellow is quite a maxim -monger.
I suppose he gets plenty of practice, and lets out his
siiyings on weekly sets of visitors. Unluckily, the Bible
itself supplies him with model sentences, such as one

.873] FRENCH FORMULAS. PER A 341

that Ik- dwelt on/ Man was not made for the vSabbath.'
It is odd that the good and wise religionists never see
the danger of c] noting texts. Some texts are mere
* epigrams ' of the French form. The texts that do no
harm are the poetical jewels: ' Come unto Me . . ,' ' Now
I see thee and abhor myself,' ' Fret not thyself for the
ungodly,' ' We know that we have passed from death,
because we love.' l^ut the smart sayings in the Gospels^
and even in St. Paul's works, are not so safe for our little
minds.

Wiser is Mrs. in setting herself every seventh

day to live otherwise than on the six days, though the
clever man may prove it to be an error to devise plans
of self-denial for a transposed Sabbath — wiser is she than
many liberal advocates of heart-religion. . .

Hotel de France, Pera, Europe, April 13,
Easier Day, 8 a.m. — Two hours since I got up, four
since I woke by moonlight and recognized the great
city, two to wait for breakfast. Turkey has put on a
semblance of rigid virtue : detains my twelve Balzacs,
preventing my finishing to-day the edifying auto-
biography of the ' country doctor ' : there was no one at
the Custom House w^ho could read French. I must go
there to-morrow to rescue the books, and my Smyrna
table-cloth, and my Egyptian cigarettes. No bribe
asked for. A strong contrast with the barefaced swind-
ling at Smyrna. No passport asked for. I feel at home
with the Tophane fountain, as smooth and elegant as
ever — more than I am ! Twenty years ago I came here,
perhaps unwrinkled, certainly not without plenty of
re<'isons for wrinkles in the eight years I had then gone
through of usher life. . .

The weather on Friday (April 1 1 ) was perfect ;

342 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

yesterday a little chilly, but enjoyable. . . Mitylene by
moonlight was one of those absolute pictures which I
hope every one sees at least once — every one that travels.
It is a shabby thing to call it a picture or a scene ; and
to make out a catalogue of the ing edients is stale, poor
work. We stopped there long enough to give me time
to think of everybody, above all of those oarsmen who
came there from Athens just in time, hot and aching
with their glorious efforts made to save their city from
the stain of hasty slaughter.

Dardanelles in the early morning looked well, much
more hilly than I thought. We wasted a good many
hours there. I could not stay awake all night to feast
on the moonlight, but I had almost a surfeit of it. This
voyage from Smyrna took forty hours — eighty francs —
the most prosperous of my tour. . .

7 p.m. I have had a long stroll, remembering the
sturdy Genoese tower and the contrast between the
straight cypresses and the bending headstones, the fates
and the poor mortals. In the transcendental filth of Galata
there were delicate bits of wooden lattice work, bold corbel
work, an orchard in blossom almost worthy of Exeter,
a jolly set of boys playing a kind of leap-frog : two boys
stooped stern to stern looking east and west, a third
crouched looking north, with his head fixed between
them as a buttress to their roof: then a fourth boy went
over the mass with a somersault ; if he failed, he was
greeted with Olympian laughter from men looking on.
The kneeling boy knelt on a cloth. . .

Tuesday, April 1 5. W^c saw the fabrics of Aleppo
in a wholesale room, part of a big, well-built, nearly
emi)ty khan, three stories of round arched galleries,
big enough for a College, massive and wholesome.

1873] CONSTANTINOPLE. GOLDEN HORN 343

We boiio|-ln sandal-dust in the well -remembered drug;-
(l"Coryj)tian) bazaar. Twice we crossed the water in pretty
caitjiies, rowed skilfully as in 1853 by handsome, cheerful,
easily contented men, the best watermen I ever saw. We
went to a jolly carpenter, who had made a cypress
box to keep furs (23 francs), with a lock that rings
a bell when turned, and has a key pushed in slant-
wise ; painted light green, like the silly Cairo trunks
— adorned more simply. We looked at a blind man
playing the caloon or dulcimer — real Turkish music,
with no rhythm ; he hit the wures with little sticks tipped
witli tortoiseshell. Save the bass, it was rather pretty ;
not so pretty as bird -song.

Tw^o letters ; every one in England ill, or in danger, or
out of temper : but some remember me, and their words
soothe me. . .

April 16, 5 p.m. I have strolled nearly three hours,
alone, under the guidance of the sun. From the bridge
of boats, w^hich to-day was clear and quiet enough for
a lover's w^alk, there was at 2.0, and again at 4.0, a delight-
ful view. What are the special charms of this place ?
(i) The Golden Horn narrows gradually, leading the
fancy into the hills ; and it has no mud-banks, nor any
need of formal quays, and the hills all round treat it like
a lake, giving shadows. (2) The crests or nipples of the
Stamboul hill-line are crowned with appropriate build-
ings, the domes of the mosques ; these mark out the
axis-like vertebrae. I like to think that great Romans
once lived on them as in the original smaller Rome :
even now I come to exceedingly high walls at these points,
and imagine palaces and paradises inside them ; but the
true Roman would have scorned to hide his mansion.
(3) The north-eastern side of the Horn, Pera, is not all

344 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

town ; there are broad and effective patches of cypress,
and in the landscape these are solemn and graceful. My
view to-day did not take in the Asiatic side. The
splendour of this day makes it a far finer place than it
was in August, 1853. I passed, going south from the
bridge, under a grand pierced wall with secitlaire stems
of ivy. This was new to me. I walked on straight and
reached railway and water, not the old outer walls. The
fldnerie did not bring in much : six men hammering on
an anvil, rhythmically, like bell-ringers, but with the
undesigned variety of dress, and with the half- spirited
slenderness and half- fanatical dryness of Eastern people
undefiled with gin and Dickens ; a very merry little boy
on crutches ; six pair of beloved Tuscan oxen toiling up
the steep hill with carts and wares unworthy of them ;
spring breaking out and betraying herself through
square iron grates in the walls of neglected gardens :
a man's voice followed by a boy -choir in what I took for
a Greek church ; grave men and meek women stopping
to drink out of the cups of one of those adorable
fountains, which utterly beat our best Gothic wells, and
put to shame our stingy Cockney things of the last few
years ; many streets of visible, happy, unconscious in-
dustry. Not a Frank to be seen till I got back to Galata.

These are not such impressions as Theophile Gautier
would care to print : but they are true. . .

April 17, I p.m. I have a book to read, Theophile
Gautier 's novel ; and when too stupid even for that,
I look at Lever's last book, which contains lively bits
about Pera diplomacy and veiled personalities. I have
spent 100 minutes in the handsome room of the club,
reading Times^ &c., alone and comfortable; the first
good chair since Jan. 15th. I see that a certain person

1873] CONSTANTINOPLE. ' PERFIDE ALBION ' 345

has missed n q^ood place ^ at Oxford, ^iven to a i^ood
man called Kino;- ; and one of the pao;-ans outside
wonders why it costs ;{? 1,300 a year to maintain the
representative of St. Paul. I dare say Paul himself spent
nearly as much in some of his years of greatest activity.
I have lost my way to the Post Office for the fourth
time, and yet posted my letters — fifteen in thirteen
weeks; our mail not yet in. How shall I go with this
heavy head to the bridge, get a caique, say ' vScutari,'
land there, look at Olympus and its far-off snows,
perhaps find Parker's and Grenfell's graves, my naval
acquaintances of 1853 } Why hoard this remnant of life
by prudent moping indoors .'*...

April 19. Not up to writing after dinner. Yesterday
I sat quietly in the club reading old papers and Revtie
des Detix Mondes, in which Comte de Jarnac charges
Palmerston with trickery in interpolating a protocol.
Sir Henry Elliot caps this with a similar trick of
Napoleon's, when consul, in his concordat. We in-
vestigated, rather too hastily, the origin of the phrase,
* perfide Albion.' Sir Henry Elliot thinks it began
with Napoleon. The question I care about is, what are
the grounds for it ? Jarnac mentions Clive as Palmer-
ston's forerunner. Our great perfidies date as far back as
Charles II. Beachy Head, Bolingbroke's abandonment
of allies in 1711. But in the wars of the eighteenth
century there was great courtesy between France and
England. In the American war we loved each other as
good antagonists. In dealing with Napoleon we in-
curred the charge of not giving up Malta ; perhaps by^
taking the Spanish gold-ships in 1805 before declaration
of w^ar. But no doubt our one great breach of faith in

* The Chair of Pastoral Theology.

346 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

French eyes is the imprisonment of Napoleon. I should
like to go over it with a candid Frenchman like M. de
Remusat ; any one else would spoil the inquiry by
turning it into a game of tic qtwqtie. . .

Vienna^ April 26. — Relieved was I at finding that
I only had to pay 16 francs for the extra weight of my
green box all the way to Vienna. I am already fond of
it ; its absurd colour makes it flash upon me in a douane
like a companion.

To Rev. C. W. Ftirse.

Hotel Wilder Mann, Vienna,

April -26^ 1873.

I want news. Last night I spelt out of the German
paper the news of our row in Egypt, which may be the
beginning of what so many people wish for, the annexa-
tion thereof. When I was in the East twenty years
ago, of course there was a manifest cloud of ' Eastern
Question,' and this time again there has been the Lesseps
dispute, of which perhaps less is said in England than
would be said if people knew how the French feel
about it.

It is, in another form, our old contest with Buonaparte,
which Nelson and Abercromby settled : the durable
monuments of their success are our beautiful, happy city
Valctta (which is really a jewel of the British crown), and
our grand l^mbassy at Constantinople ; the site of which,
l)eing much the best in Pera, was given after the Battle
of the Nile by a grateful vSultan to our Minister.

Journai. April 27. I have been two days now in
silence ; but the waiters say ' Good morning ' and ' Good
night,' and the one that talks French comes up to say

1873] VIENNA, CATHEDRAL. OPERA 347

that it is cold, and answers questions about the town ;
and to-morrow I am to have a dragoman. Meanwhile
die people are jrood at helpinir me to Imd my way, and
I knew my way to the Cathedral, which seems familiar
enou<rh, and ajrain strikes me as a sad relig-ious building
whose g-loom is enhanced by contrast with the very
noisy old town of which it is the heart. Hut all else is
amazino-ly brightened since i860, when I was here with
the gay Dillon (attache), the friendly Edward Herbert,
then learning that language which he had to talk three
years ago in the midst of his murderers.

The ferocious east wind makes me walk fast, but
sometimes I linger among the jolly shrubs, flowering
earlier, it seems, than at Pera — probably more sheltered.
These young gardens replace the useless ramparts ; and
if it were not for the fresh memory of the brave
Tegethoif and the unhappy Benedek, one might be
tempted to think there was peace at last on the Danube,
the witness of more irrational half-hearted wars than any
other river. It is odd how it goes at right angles, in
every sense, to the Nile ; one might write a long chapter
on that contrast.

I have had seven hours of good music for four
shillings in great atmospheric comfort, opera and con-
cert. Romeo and Juliet by Gounod, an unrestrained
lyrical thing, not ' spectacular ' ; the blessing of it to me
was that the woman's pure fluent voice sometimes
became one with the violin, — the thing that the old
prince in Massimilia Doni raves about, and indeed it
seems to me the wonder of the world, the marriage of
humanity and ' nature.' I was halfway down the star-
board side of the gallery, sitting alone on a step, not
even caring to look at the stage. I fancied I never

348 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

heard better ; certainly it was far more ethereal than
what one pays so much for in a stall, and our company
in the fourth ' Stock ' loved music too well to fidget, and
1 had no fret about libretto, simply remembering how
I grieved at Cambridge, in reading the play, for the
6a\€pol alCqoL^ slain one after another ; and the pretty
bits I had turned into Greek so long ago were in the
mind ready to meet the music, though perhaps never
fitting in at all. It is to be hoped Gounod understood
them better than I did when I had to translate them.

Was death invented that there might be poetry ? If
so, it is, after all, not so senseless an arrangement.

At the concert in the Volksgarten I was at leisure to
think of the dead, including Marie Antoinette ; also to
watch six bonny children, who made pretty use of the
curving lane between the tables where we sat drinking our
beer and talking much too loud. The human sugar-plums
went two and two just to ease their restlessness, disturb-
ing no one, softening the bulbous lumps of black hat and
black petticoat. I wished for Greek dresses and Arab
manners to suit the soft ^ Fliigel-horn ' which played
ex(|uisitely Schubert's ' Standchen in C-dur,' and to set
off the delightful ' Hymne an den Friihling,' by
Ferd. C. Wolf. There was a waltz called ' Deutsche
Grusse,' and I thought the greetings of the soldiers were
better than most music. Add Austrian smiles to the
other national delicacies, and you get a gracious mix-
ture; but there are choicer things still, such as the Irish
grace of the lady at Alexandria.

I ought to make honourable mention of the [preacher
at St. vStc[)hcn's ; not that I could take in his sentences,
short and simple as they were, but the words I recog-
nized -and they were very many served as stepping-*

1873] niCNNA. CONCERT. ST. STEPHEN'S 349

stones, and the action of his hands helped me, and above
all the accent was so lui^lish that it seemed as if there
were very little to keep us asunder. He really preached ;
not a tissue of metaphors, iiis text seemed to be ' His
own received him not ' ; but he put it in the first person,
* I came to mine own,' and it was wholesomely affecting,
much like what Tauler must have been before Luther ;
no substantial chang-e. The Jesuits and the Concordat
have peeled off, the old German piety remains. He
spoke once of the Sacrament : ' He comes back in it.'
He did not preach of the Mother. As far as I could tell
it might have been Lutheran teaching, and I fancied it
was plain enough for the homely folk amongst whom
I stood —too plain for Westminster Abbey, as things are
now\ Now the listeners, who afterwards recited the Creed,
then sang at the rood-screen, and knelt and crossed them-
selves, although apparently very earnest, did not stick to
the worship with one accord. Every moment there was
some one slipping away — perhaps to dinner, obliged to
be in time, dining at noon, staying in church as long as
they could, and going sooner if they lived farther off.
Be this as it may, the melting of the mass looks unlike
the worship of Paul's converts. I don't think he would
like it. Saint Stephen of Hungary, the land which took
the Church from Thrace, and had to rid itself by hard
fighting of the antichristian invaders who came after-
wards from Thrace, gives his name to the mother-
church of another people, a people dragged into
countless defeats by purblind dynasty-servers ; and
seldom can this church have been without widows
weeping for men killed in feeble irresolute wars. And
I I can hardly think of a Christian building more like
I Gethsemane for sorrowfulness. Here, not in the People's

350 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Mav

Garden nor in the theatre echoing to fictive woes, I found
the representatives of the poor brave men smitten b\
insolent Fredericks and Napoleons and Bismarcks. And
now they have done with the Pope, they have a good
Kaiser who is also the true King of Hungary ; and
I hope they are free for ever from the hirelings who
love not the sheep. . .

To Hon. F. L. Wood.

May 1 6, 1873.

I am rather pained by the churlish article in the
Times on J. S. Mill. It was a sad thing for his admirers
when he went wrong about the rinderpest rate ; and since
then he has not been a Pope to me. But it is miserable
narrow-mindedness to speak as that writer did of his
Logic, and to say nothing of his most edifying, delightful,
ennobling Dissertations. He alone did due honour to
the seemingly irreconcileable philosophers S. T. Cole-
ridge and Bentham. He alone taught us the value of
French historians. He alone, by logic, helped Liebig
to go ahead in chemistry. His philosophy only is in
tune with Ruskin, Wordsworth and Mozart. He was
the guide of the very best and ablest academical men of
the last twenty-five years — and what would England be
without them ? no better than France or New York.

To F. Warre Cornish.

Halsdon, May 19, 1873.

This is not my crest. 1 use it by accickuit. Don't tell
Mr. Lowe\ as I have ceased to pay for armorials. . .
I can imagine what you grumble at, or wish to be able

* Then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

73

] J. S. MILL. RUSK IN 35 r

to cfrumble at. Rut still I doubt whether it is a benig^htecl
school compared with other schools. Anyhow, I am out
of the way of hearing- people revile it, and the few people
1 have met abroad were not uncivil. . .

Other Germans . . . when not speaking- of England,
gave me satisfaction ; and I regret more than ever that
their language is indigestible. ' Herz ' and ' Schmerz '
rhyme (or rime) twelve times in their version of Afri-
caine, and when Vasco said, at the end of his song,
' Unsterblichkeit,' with the South German slushing of the
guttural, it was truly nauseous.

To H. E. Luxmoore.

Halsdon, May 23, 1873.

I am so greatly interested in all that I find in your long
and good letter, which came soon after a still longer letter,
wholly unexpected, from Cecil Spring Rice. Please
to say to him that his account of his tour was very good
reading, and all his Eton news very welcome. Both he
and you write about Ruskin, and I shall be glad to say
something about him which you can show the boy.
I abhor Ruskin 's rant about economics, such as I found
last year in two numbers that I read of his periodical
pamphlets, w^hose mad name I have forgotten. But I go
steadily year after year to his great books : just now
I have naturally read over again his good chapter on
Salvator and Diirer, and enjoyed his curious, pretty, and
correct drawing of the Moat of Nuremberg, which in its
May dress, Sunday before last, was delicious to look
down into.

Similarly, on coming back from the Alps last year,
I went dutifully to his great essay on mountains. And

352 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

as to his lectures at Eton, I remember, but for the
narrow-minded porcupines in office, he would have
lectured at Eton in the days of his third volume: he
sent me then the bit of missal work, botany of the
fourteenth century, which he has engraved in that
volume ; then he was all alive about thirteenth centur\'
illuminations.

The Swallow. Well — does he not yield to the
' pathetic fallacy ' in calling it ' good ' ? not that one can
object to the p. f. — for poets live on it ; only there is no
' truth ' in such language. ' Good ' is a term of morality ;
till he shows that birds have a conscience we are justified
in holding that they have no morahty ; they are neither
good nor bad. I believe the classical poets called the
swallow good partly because he buried his father ; but
this is a ' fallacy of observation ' long ago exploded.

In Broderip's Zoological Recreations one finds any
amount of classical lore about birds, very nice as poetry :
by all means let it be brought on the table for every
generation. Let men set verses on Ruskin s or Ovid s
swallow : but let us keep in mind the difference between
this and scientific treatment; though, of course, one
speiiker, one listener, may easily divide his brains for
the two views simultaneously taken. Cecil Spring Rice
seems struck by the quotation given by Ruskin, ' Beauty
is truth— truth beauty/ If so, why need we trouble
ourselves to have both terms. I hold with some firm-
ness Bishop Butler s axiom, ' Everything is that which it
is and not another thing.'

. . . What is ' realism ' but truthfulness without beauty?
Do you see ' Brothers of the Brush ' at the Royal
Academy on the line? Is it truthful? Perhaps.
Beautiful? Who will dare say so?

.873] 'THE EXCURSION.' CHESS 353

To Capt. A. II. Drum7no7id.

Halsdon, June 7, 1873.

I keep to-day the blessed feast of St. Barnabas and
Cookhain iris by working- alone with brush, hook,
prunincr-knifc, digging- fork, wheelbarrow, watering-pot.
.Vnd 1 wish 1 had a water-party on Torridge : quite
j)Ossible in itself, only nobody will, or can, come, except
at dirty times of the year.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, July 7, 1873.

Sir John Coleridge (Attorney-General) did me a service
three years ago by speaking- so strongly of the Ex-
cursion as to make me at last read it straight through
at a sitting. It did me good at the time ; I think Sir John
was right, though at the time he seemed to me to over-
estimate the book.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Halsdon, Aug, 22, 1873.

I have just been teaching Sybil chess. I made out, or
some demon for me, a most ingenious new game, hating
it all the while. Chess is ' uncanny,' as you will learn
no doubt from the Scots to say. It is a waste of pure
brain force, which ought to go to the teaching of French
men of business and Spanish orators and Irish mal-
contents. Think what has been wasted on the game
these centuries : also imagine how the Persians have
spent on calligraphy toil that might have made some
reservoirs. There was a man who tied down his kanofa-
roos that their jumping might turn his threshing-machine:

A a

354 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

suppose all the pulpit men had been thumping all this
time at lumps of earth instead of sham listeners ; England
would be all friable loam, fit for growing good plants.
You go now to a Presbyterian church and see an honest
man painfully exciting himself: don't hate him. He is
not soothing nor yet very stirring, but he is almost
always grave. I have seen a few of the ministers : only
one was a jester, not one was a simperer.

To H. E. Luxmoore.

Halsdon, Sept. 2, 1873.

I am very grateful to you for writing to me, and truly
interested in all you write, particularly about your
father, whose age seems to me to show the blessing
of a well-regulated mind and sweet temper. . .

And now lets me see a beautiful letter from

J. H. N. acknowledging the arrival of a little book,
which my Brother has just printed, in which he speaks of
the old vSunday afternoons in St. Mary's, Oxford. It is
strangely pathetic — Newman's regard for his lost friends
and for the ' young men whom he did not know, who
have been faithful to him ' — whilst some of his old
friends, he says, are still ' unforgiving ' to him.

This broke off, I suppose it was chiefly on account of
the wood fire and smoke, which made me unusually
stupid at night ; by day I have been busy trimming up
for the gathering of people held yesterday. It is touching
to notice how glad the neighbours are to come far,
through rain, to meet on the pretext of looking at the
pumpkins and potatoes of cottagers. We had a struggle
to finisli our little bit of architectural luxury, the conical
roof of the garden-house or dovecot, of which the thatch

1873] NEWMAN. BUILDINGS AT HALSDON 355

was cl.'ini:io;ecl last winter. The old man said slate would
not keep the frost off the apples and potatoes which he
stores there, and I would not ^o on with thatch for fear
of fire — so I resorted to tiles, handsome copper-coloured
things from Hroseley in Shropshire. Their carriage cost
;^ii, and took four carts two days to fetch them from
the station ; but we have enough left for a pigstye. The
old building was found to be quite out of the square,
and the mason wanted me to rebuild the walls ; but
I preferred thickening the north side with stone, and
they made shift elsewhere. The rain hindered them, but
by a struggle I got all traces of the job cleared away an
hour before the people came ; and a man of taste, who
had come tw^elve miles, congratulated me spontaneously
on the little thing, saying it was ' so French,' which was
not intended : the thing that I wanted it to be like was
that queer little deserted well-house on Romney Mead
just below Windsor weir. . .

I am glad to find myself likely to be in the minority
about politics, and to be deserted by the unpalatable
allies, political Dissenters. Whig principles hold good
in adversity, and I had rather be beaten with Sir T.
Acland than win with Dixon.

To A. D. Coleridge.

IIalsdon, Oct. 21, 1873.

I have tried once more to read Wilhelm Meister (in
Carlyle's English) — it is absolute bosh. Goethe is 7wt
the typical German ; if the Germans were as spoony as
his people or as heartless as himself they would not
attract you or me as they do : I am persuaded that
for fifty or sixty years we have been in the dark about

A a 2

356 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

Germany, mainly because of our being- accustomed to
take Goethe as the representative. However, I suppose
it is also true that their upper class has greatly im-
proved, has shaken off his art-worship, has become more
masculine, more political. It vexes me that there is no
Wagner in their literature : odd that the nation which
gives us the best music cannot write a book or create
an orator to move our hearts, and yet is itself singularly
rich in simple goodness of heart.

To Rev. C. W. Purse.

Oct. 29, 1873.

... It is not you, nor your brother preachers, that
can combat ' society ' — there are only two kinds of people
that can be said to protest against the pomps and
vanities : —

(i) Benson of Cowley and other followers of St. Francis,

(2) Faraday and similar lovers of truth.

Mill's book affected me much more than any clerical
velvet -pawing. Think that he was charmed out of
juvenile despondency by Wordsworth ; drawn from
hide-bound Benthamism by S. T. Coleridge ; became an
enthusiastic, austere philosopher, the rarest of characters.
Unluckily he runs down England without giving proof
of our inferiority to the French : but Jeremiah ran down
the glorious Jewish people, and Milton was as bitter as
Mill in his last few years was.

To H. O. Sitirgis.

Halsdon, Nov. q, 1873.

The real use of Cambridge and Oxford is to inspirit,
and tie up (as my plants are tied to stakes against
winds) th(» good generous hearts which sweeten the
nation : you all get together in companies and battalia,

1873] GOETHE. J. S. MILL. OXFORD 357

.md you believe for three or five years in the supremacy
of i^oocl intentions — and we poor peasants and grimy
to\vnspeoj:>Ie are the better for the going- forth of your
sharpshooters. The Universities are, highland reservoirs
of spring waters gathered, the springs of youth.

To H. G. Willink,

Nov. 27, 1873.

The defence of our extremely protracted boyhood is,
I suppose, to be found in two considerations : Firstly, We
take our play before our work ; and we get it when our
health is good enough for enjoyment of it, and we take
in such stock of strength that wx are best fit for steady
work at fifty. (Nothing of this applies to me.)

Secondly, it answers best to begin apprenticeship early,
say at sixteen, if one is to go on in a groove.

It answers best to go till twenty -three with reading,
visiting, talking, and playing games, if one is to be
* many-sided,' to have influence with all sorts of human
beings, to rule and guide the men of special and Hmited
practice who are frightened when out of their grooves. . .

Anyhow, the Oxford course, taken in moderation (not
lengthened as it has been lately), is apparently the best
preparation for the clerical or parliamentary or diplo-
matic professions, and as good as any for the law. . .

It is doubtful whether most minds could form legal
conceptions sooner than young men now do who go as
graduates to inns of court.

Still I think the whole thing can be shortened so as
to end at twenty-one, given good health, and no eccen-
tricity or distemperatures of mind. . .

The 1 53 trees were put in by three people and a half,
not by me alone. Since then I have, with the help of
Fred Lees, who is a perfect companion, put seventy -five

358 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

plants into new pits dug- in the clay above the duck-
pond. Hard work, because we had to bring the soil
there, with the donkey's help.

I really work as a rough under-gardener, doing some
things which amateurs do not often do. I read also,
and attend the Board of Guardians, being interested in
poor-law because my father at one time worked at it
(under your grandfather).

I have to look sharp about expense in order to have
money for improvements. I buy no books except a few
cheap French novels.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Halsdon, Dec. 29, 1873.

I have not many reasons for thanking old Eton,
un reformed Eton. But I remember with gratitude the
gracious and generous compliments given me in my
first year or two by Hawtrey, Plumptre, Pickering,
Cookesley, and H. Dupuis. The elder men did not show
jealousy of me, and if they felt it and suppressed it
they are the more to be praised. We can't always help
being jealous, but we can keep down the feeling, and in
concealing it we go far towards stifling it. . .

X. seems to me to be fast becoming a dame. That
is the simplest expression for the degradation of the
tutor; it is, probably, too late now to turn him into
a professor ; but I think other men might combine the
dame with the professor, and I fancy that is the tendency
at li^ton, almost irresistible. Verses, themes, private
business, construings go — the tutor goes with them.
I am sorry for it — it is 'drifting' : it is just like the
crumbling away of l^lizabethan ICrastian establishments,
achnirabUi wise institutions allowed to jxirish through

1873] PI^OGRESS AT ETON. 11. BRADSHAW 359

the faintness and skimpinc;^ of respectable and intelligent
men.

Never mind. I say to myself, Mumbo Jumbo is dead. . .
The school is full of young men trained on the ' liberal
education ' of Cambridge and on the generous openness
of modern Eton, which, with all its faults, is a Paradise
compared with the Eton which starved me, man and boy,
till 1851.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Halsdon, Dec. 30, 1873.

Let him take you to the happy rooms of Bradshaw,
the learned, delicate-lady-minded, original, hospitable,
clever librarian -friend of all literary men and of all
sociable civilized undergraduates. . .

Trinity College is the place of all others which I bless
for having always overwhelmed me with kindness ; yet
I have no one there to whom I can introduce you
among the ' Dons,' only I can advise you to take any
chance there is of being intimate with a young don, say
a man of twenty-three or twenty-five. It is from one
of that age that an undergraduate draws new ideas :
you would fritter away your time in vain if you talked
all night with Bob Lyttelton and the like : don't let them
absorb you ; reserve times for yourself; get to know
some few men with whom you can take tea regularly,
not big sets of loungers ; have a room to go to in
which you can take up a book and talk about it now
and then — talk, I mean, in detail, about things that
you notice in a book, things new, doubtful, striking
or touching. Don't be always looking on at sports or
games, but take grave donnish walks along the Mading-
ley or Trumpington roads, giving yourself time to finish
a topic with some tolerably thoughtful companion ;

360 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

don't talk loud — avoid the ' ritournelle ^ ' of which Balzac
writes, i. e. the laugh that ends a speech.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Halsdon, Dec. 31, 1873.

From what you say I gather that there is once more
a risk of dissidence of athletic and sociable masters from
the others. For every one who does not play games
there is, I apprehend, more or less risk of falHng into
the loss of judgement which comes inevitably when one
lives like Polyphemus. . .

If you find your grotto keeps you away from walking
men, and if you no longer meet them in Chambers, please
make some effort to keep up familiar intercourse with
them. I suppose men will gather at the skirts of cricket-
field and football-field, but in the 'beagle half perhaps
there is more chance of isolation. No man can safely
keep aloof from his colleagues. D. did for years, and
got into wretched grumps, but got out of them ; and
there have been worse results than that, and different
kinds of bad results.

You use the word ' morose.' What really happens,
I imagine, is that one gets into a less charitable way
of thinking about other men's habits; one gets more
and more annoyed by such things as the weak giggle
of Balbus and the matutinal laziness of Caius.

If you find this coming on you, pray struggle against
it, and go out in quest of some one to walk with or take
tea with. . .

' ' Lc mairc se mit ii rirc dc ce rirc sans expression par lequel
ccrtaincs pcrsonncs finissent toutes Icurs phrases, et qu'on dcvrait
appelcr la ritourttelU dc la conversation.'

1873] 'SOCIETY' AND SERMONS 361

Eton is still to me ' little Encrhnd,' and England is my
idol as much as if I were Mr. Pitt or Mr. Wyndham.

7"<9 Rev. C. IV. Ftirse.

1873.

Barry writes, evidently after hearing you preach, just
as if an R.A. touched up his lights after his picture was
hung to compete with a rival neighbour : his sermon
is more than yours, a bending of the knee in the house
of Rimmon. Edward Irving would scout its complais-
ance. J. S. Mill, the atheist philosopher, in his auto-
biography, hits on the head the nail that Barry polishes
all round, shows one in a few words why he forsook
'society.' Tennyson's example is more persuasive than
any sermon, so is Cowper's, Wordsworth's, Bryant's (now
alive), Darwin's, Faraday's.

Surely one might reasonably expect a preacher like
Barry to tell one in some Htde detail how to behave
about making acquaintances, keeping them up, &c.
Some reference to the Gospel rule about invitations ;
some words about the ' calculated kindness of nice
people'; something about the dangers of Christians
when making tours ; something about conversation, for
w^hich poor old Cowper would give hints ; something
about the consent and approval given substantially to
men of lower aims by the Sam Oxons and others whom
they meet in society ; something about the Londoners'
way of spending vSunday, either going into the country,
or going a round of visits and talking all the afternoon.

. . . To Edw\ Irving, to Chalmers, to Isaac Williams
and others, whose minds are known to me in books,
it would, I think, seem plainly irreverent to praise
St. John's Gospel as a composition, w^hich you do ; and

362 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec. 1873

to me it seems odd to speak of it as if it were a book
calculated to soothe rather than to alarm the nice people,
since it is to me fke Calvinistic book of the New
Testament — the most stern, all through speaking of
the Jews as enemies, parted by a Red Sea from the
believers.

Your general statement that Christ rejected the
beauties and sweets, is open to this remark, that there
was then in Judaea very little to reject. Asceticism in
the real dry dusty East, and in those days when there
was hardly any luxury to be had even for the rich,
could take hardly any shape but abstinence from feasts
of Pharisees or Sadducees, feasts which no Roman
gentleman of those days would have cared to attend.
The Jews had no theatre, &c. Jerusalem must have
been then pretty nearly as unattractive to a (pikoKaXos
as Sparta.

Germanicus in those days travelled in Egypt ; Palestine
was not worth his notice.

We have been at breakfast talking of war. The people
here are eager for it, and talk of 200,000 men to come
from India to Turkey, as if it could be done straight
off. . .

I say to the ladies, ' Think of the young man you
value most — son, brother; think of his being slain or
maimed, just to prevent the Russians from doing this
or that. If you really think you can bear tliis, then ask
for war.'

There is a very clever man called Valbert, who writes
on the politics of Europe in the Rcinic. He says that-
England will lose the friendship of France if vshe takes;
i^gypt, and the respect of bVance and all nations if she!
takes the advice of the 'anti-impcriiilists,' that is, thel

March 1874] IMPERIAL POLICY. GARRISONS 363

men who say, they do not wish to risk anythinir in
order to maintain a i)rominent place in the State system.
Hut who are these people ? My belief is that the ' Bul^a-
romanes,' as he calls them, and the friends of Bright and
of Freeman, are really bent upon keeping- our ' empire '
and our vote amongst the great nations in Congress,
in order that w^e may succour and comfort the nation-
alities or inchoate states. Now it can be explained to
the Dissenter and the man who takes the omnibus,
that by saving the Bosphorus, &c., from the grasp of
Russia, w^e shall do our best to give the Roumanians,
the Greeks and others fair play.

This imperial policy I favour ; and I do not shudder
at the thought of my young friends in the Guards or
the Navy dying horrible deaths in carrying it out. But
I am sure the kind, nice people generally will be sickened
by the first news of a young gentleman being left out
at night, wounded and feverish, or of a frigate being
sunk with all hands, or of a battalion being reduced from
900 to nine effectives by a month's sickness. And it
is a pity they cannot be reminded of the things of this
kind that happened in 1854.

To Capt. A. H. Druinmoitd.

Halsdon, March 2, 1874.

Three millions a year added to the cost of the army
will give us a considerable, respectable force — only
abolish the absurd custom of locking up our marching
battalions in Aden, St. Helena, Bermuda, Gibraltar,
Hong Kong, Malta, and trust the forts everywhere to
veteran companies or battalions belonging to the exist-
ing regiments and retaining their fame and esprit de

364 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

corps, of course not dispensing with gunners ; but why
employ a nimble lad of twenty-one in a place where
he can at the best get a little run on an Alameda, can
never have a march or a reason for bivouacking, and
gets very little of the gregarious contagion of camps,
the enlargement of mind produced by seeing many other
soldiers besides his own messmates. . .

Sir G. Wolseley sees a lot of things ; why does he
fail to see that Gibraltar, Malta, Bermuda, St. Helena,
Mauritius, Hong Kong, Halifax, Nassau, Kingston, Port
of Spain, &c., can be held by ' veteran companies,' such
as defended Minorca under Blakeney in 1756 — men who
are a little too sore-toed for marching, but not too old
to keep watch ; married men, attached still to their old
regiments. Absurd to put into httle islands and rock
forts a lot of juicy militiamen capable of running. There
should be veteran batteries of artillery too.

To H. O. Sturois.

Halsdon, March 27, 1874.

I fancy human nature is much the same in country
and town : in London I have found just the same simple
kind people that we are told to look for in Cranford.

I used to think luon shopkeepers as good as Cam-
bridge shopkeepers, and I now find those of Torrington
much the same as the other two sets. . .

I don't think men hold together much on any but
religious alliances — except, of course, those rare creatures
who are incapable of variableness. . .

I am obliged to seem unfaithful in cases in which
1 am really smouklering in old heats of affection
1 daresiiy Philoctetes often thought with a groan o;

1874] TOWN AND COUNTRY 36^-5

lost comrades to whom he could send no message, and
when Ncoptolenuis came, he pitied the lonely man who,
in his turn, trusted him : that is in Sophocles, you know.

7^0 A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, ApHl 3, 1874.

I am a Whig : 1 place some trust in written ordinances
and institutions as affecting in the long run personal
character: this trust serves me in my present local affairs.

To H. E. Lttxinoore.

Halsdon, April 15, 1874.

I make feeble attempts to learn a little law ; not that
what I read can be brought to bear directly on our
local affairs : but perhaps the habit of thinking about
legality may enable one to judge more correctly in
transactions.

As far as I can vSee it turns out true, as I expected,
that the main education of farmers, tradesmen and
labourers is given by the law, of course through in-
herited and accumulated perceptions : this, and the loose
but expansive and elevating remembrance of the Bible,
are mainly the stock of notions one can reckon upon
in talking to them : as Huxley says, the Bible gives
them a notion that there are other nations and other
states of mind besides ours ; and law gives them a
constant (? low) standard of right and obligation. But
they seem fairly contented with North Devon — with an
occasional glimpse into ' up the country ' when some one
gets a place, like a boy w-ho goes to be a buttons at
Cuddesdon, and their contentment takes a very pleasing
form of cheerfulness, breaking out of all their grumblings.

366 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

Now that I have ceased to buy cows of them (breeding
calves for myself) I really like the farmers, or peasants,
quite as much as I ever liked ordinary Cambridge and !
Eton people. I dined with them as a plain ratepayer on
Ladyday, and was quite as much at my ease and in my
element as I ever was in the Halls ^ .

The apprentices, who are glad after the ' journey ' to
come and bestow their hour of leisure on school, seem
to me more wholesomely circumstanced than the foot-
ballers who go at the same hour to Private Business.
Their countenances and attitudes and their little ways
of getting help or borrowing paper are so like what
I was used to that the substantial identity is clearly
established. Real plain life without scheming, glozing,
or caricature is before me at certain times : in solitude
I miss the eye-work of the happy, and the music which
consoles the sufferers, and I cannot pretend to say that
a goat or a robin makes up for the loss. All I can do
is to abate loneliness by gradual increase of neighbourly
employment : if this can be, as it has been hitherto, got
without intrusion or fuss, I shall be at fifty where my
father was at thirty ; and if I can do at all as he did
it will make up for all the failures. . .

I am at ease about money . . . and if I stick to the
soil, which I have good reasons for doing, I can ' keep
up ' the house, employ several poor women who would
otherwise get no flannel nor even potatoes, entertain
roving scholars on Marsala and very cheap cider, and
buy enough newspapers to keep alive my patriotism. .

Should you ever be at leisure to come here, you
would say so. If at leisure only to write, it would be
an act of mercy to do that, and to tell me all the|

' At Cambridge.

1874] COUNTRY NEIGHBOURS :^6'j

good and none of the evil that you know of the old
school. . .

I am goings 10 Pupil-Room; it takes half an hour to

g-et to it.

To H. O. Siurgis.

Halsdon, May 24, 1874.

Yesterday I was going along the canal, soon to be
a road : saw two men at work on it making a culvert
to cross and hide the embouchure of ' Lady Wash,'
Margaret Beaufort's rivulet, now foul with the outflow
of tanpits.

I was going off, having learnt what I wanted, when
one of them called me back, by the name of 'Johnson.'
He was a Norman, remembered my father, &c. This is
what I like. My father was so wonderfully simple, guile-
less, industrious, unconsciously devoted to all sorts of
little tiresome duties to be done for kinsfolk and neigh-
bours. He could not speak, debate, moderate, advise,
trim, prune men's minds as I can. But he could go on
for twenty years mending or unravelling the broken
or tangled threads of family £ s. d. matters, for poor
gentlefolk, for the children of spendthrifts, for helpless
maundering widows and spinsters. He went on doing
this for forty-four years in that little town. And I can
do but a miserable fraction of what he did : and I am
rewarded every now and then by dreaming of him. . .

To Mrs. Warre Cornish.

Halsdon, June, 1874.

I heard from Mr. Luxmoore in the autumn that you
were writing an eighteenth-century novel: I did not
think that you would remember my present crepuscular
existence with the gift. . . I take a thorough, though

368 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

philistine, interest in the joys and sorrows of your
musician. . . I hope you will be translated and lie on
the table of the Aix-la-Chapelle waiting-room for the
benefit of the daily listeners at the Kursaal orchestra. . .

Great care should, I think, be taken to go over the
narrative in A/cesh's, to see where the sXotj flags be-
tween those scenes more immediately concerned with
the action of the stor^^ It is in these pauses, or rests —
that is a musical phrase, is it not ? — of a novel, that the
strength or weakness of a writer comes out. The
French in this respect give a laudable example to
the English. They are more resolute in maintaining
a perfect vraisemblance throughout the story.

If I were writing a novel, I should proceed upon a
plan. Having chosen my subject, I should ask myself.
Can I, like Scott in the Antiquary, like Jane Austen
in Persuasion, like Gustave Droz in Babolain, like
Charlotte Bronte in Villette, relate my story from the
feehng and observation of one person only ? Sad feeble-
ness and invraiseinbla7ice ensues in many writers from
their attempt to narrate a story through the medium
of too many persons. But I much prefer this to the
jerky magic-lantern-slide manner of introducing scene
to carry on a narrative, and this you have avoided. The
difference between French and English novels is that of
their and our fowls at table. Theirs are better trussed.

To H. O. Sturgts.

Halsdon, June lo, 1874.

I have become a Republican ; but, like Gambetta, I find
room in a republic for nobles ; and I continue to be a
backer of Aristocracy. The two notions are compatible.
* Honour all men ' is the foundation of high republican

1874] 'ALCESTIS.' RICH AND POOR 369

policy. Thus in l^Vance every man is Monsieur, every

man expects to be treated with grave respect ; not with

that mockinor courtesy which is in fashion in Jinirland,

that courtesy of the rich and great, which savours of

private theatricals. . .

July II.

An aristocracy which gives men like Dufferin, North-
brook, Carnarvon a fair chance of getting to the front
early, before generosity and sweetness dry up, is a great
blessing, provided always there be no artificial barrier
set up against men of less good birth.

In U. S. there is probably much less linking of rich
and poor than with the Britons, for this reason : we
have, Yanks have not, myriads of poor mothers who
have been servants to ladies and have in their girlhood
become ladies in feeling and tastes, even in accent.
Yanks, it seems, have hardly any domestic servants like
ours. Ask your kinsfolk whether this is true in Massa-
chusetts or in other New England states. We are too
apt to generalize from New York : this is a standing
cause of misunderstanding.

The boys I see here constantly are sons of a woman
who has been in good service : I tell them the}^ can and
must learn of her how to speak gently and softly. On
a Sunday evening I sometimes walk about with mothers
who compare my ' things ' with what they used to see in
smart houses.

To H. 0. Siurgis.

Halsdon, July 6, 1874.

Ten days ago they played for the first time in public ;
it was in our barn, on the estrade where the piano was.
The audience was the Dolton choir, and my Brother's
tenants, old servants, &c. ; of course all my people too,

Bb

370 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

including the new boy, John Barley, whom every one
praises. Willink was here — he had worked briskly at
lighting up the barn with wooden chandeliers wreathed.
Mrs. and Mr. Furse worked at the hanging wreaths —
we put up my old sconces and red Indian shields. We
made tables for the supper (before all this we had
tremendous nasty work cleaning out the barn ; but it
will never be so dirty again, and it is to be the scene
of many feasts). We had a good supper after the concert
(Dolton choir : no solo), and then we had a few encores,
and a duett without accompaniment, sung by two modest
Dolton girls, sisters, which was quite affecting. Many
of the old people had never had such an evening. . .
We all sat down together, except that my servants
waited till the others had done ; but then they sat, and
we, that is chiefly Mr. Furse, served them.

I liked, above most things, seeing Philip here, and
next to him, old Milles the farmer, who is very musical
and a meek, well-bred man, delightfully free from anxiety.
Our party amounted to sixty, including the twenty in
the house. It was a perfect sunset, and all went well.
I dare say it cost about £^ in all, beyond common
household meals : just compare that with a London or
even a Dolton rectory dinner-party, and then compare
the aggregate of impressions made at the two : imagine
the sweet little thrill it gives a Dolton girl, of the
humblest birth, to come down and sing to us ' Who
is Sylvia.^' and the Carnival (Rossini's), and the teiu-ful
gratitude of Mary L., the literary woman who lives at
the corner by Hudd's mill, and of Mary the slowly
dying wife of Philip. Whereas when your rich |:)eople
go to a dinner party they think no more of it than I do
of brushing my hair.

1

1874] HALSDON. CONCERT. BOAT. HORNETS 371

To Rev. E. D. Sto7ie.

Halsdon, July 14, 1874.

My boat is in use. I take one ^irl at a time in it,
hearing a life-belt, because of the hidden rocks. Miss
M., granddaughter of an Arctic whaler, behaves
perfectly in the dangerous navigation of the Torridge.
M. F. nearly upset us by her excitement at seeing
a kingfisher. The place where the three kingfishers
are, or were, has horse-chestnuts drooping over a clear,
weedless, rocky pool at a graceful bend of the hills which
are close at hand ; not far off is loosestrife.

To Capt. A. H. DruTnntond.

Halsdon, July 17, 1874.

Yesterday I had a water-party : the boat had tw^o
passengers, one at a time. The water was lustrous —
none of your slimy Thames weeds ; kingfishers, herons,
moorhens make up for the lack of sw^ans. Horse-
chestnuts, smaller than at Ankerwyke ; supper and song
afterwards, all on a small scale, but enjoyed. The kid,
aged thirty-two days, w^ent with us willingly ; his horns
grow fiercely.

To Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, Dolton,

August 19, 1874.

Robert and I last night attacked the hornets who live
in the hollow tree on which hangs the gate through
which goes Grizzle to fetch grist from Dolton mill.

R. was in the poncho or chasuble and a muslin veil.
He directed me ; I held a long stick with a brimstone
rag. Hornets now and then dropt into burning straw —

B b 2

372 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [August

they were as stupid as the French in Strasbourg, and
made no sortie.

To-night we assist a more nimble sort of enemies,
' appledrones,' or wasps, close to the stable. R. goes to
the town to buy brimstone. I have prepared a sea-kail
pot which is to go over the hole, and a dozen dead
treelets — ' our failures ' (as Beau Brummell said of his
cravats). I hope we shall not burn the thatch of the
stable. . .

There has been a burst of new flowers, not weeds, and
birds singing and owls talking to each other since you
went.

To Rev. C. W. Furse.

August 6, 1874.

I am refreshed, when I read the papers, by the good-
ness of Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Devon.

How absurd it is to go on trying to spin sermons out
of the ' Octave of the Invocation of St. James the Less,'
and never to say grace for the worth and the victories
of living or recent men ; to know nothing of Daniele
Manin, and to go on trading on the very slender mention
made of vSt. Andrew.

76> Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, Dolton, Nov. 3, 1874.

It has often troubled me that my cart goes ' leery '
( = empty) to fetch coals. Yesterday it struck me that it
should take pots of lemon verbena, lavender, rosemary,
roses and creepers to the lonely weather-beaten cottages
on the road.

1874] ' KED CROSS.' GILBERT ACLAND 373
To A. H. Drummond.

Halsdon, Sept. 3, 1874.

The Red Cross people are doing their best to make
war resemble a cricket match, and so to encourage the
Bismarcks and Napoleons to release the detentes which
keep the fearful machines called armies from rushing at
each other like locomotives.

I prefer a republic which can't be set fighting by one
touchy old man ; and if there is to be war, I prefer
one in which two whole nations — tw^o whole sets of men
— really hate each other like the Slave-owners and the
Northerners, or like the Huguenots and the Papists.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Sept. II, 1874.

I have been wanting and reading letters about my
glorious, heroic friend Gib. Acland\ my own recruit for
the army : he has died after twenty months' silence.
Within a day of death he enjoyed, and made signs of
thanks, for some old hymns, tunes, and even for two
bits of ' In Memoriam,' which he liked as a boy, and
which they knew by my having marked them with his
initials. His father discouraged his brother officers from
coming to the funeral ; but the battalion gave up its one
yearly holiday (sports, &c.) and sent six young sergeants
to bear him to the family grave ; and Francis Pelham,
who went to the funeral, ran after them to thank them
and say, ' He was my sergeant in our Volunteers at Eton '
— and they said there w^as no officer at all like him : he
had never been out of temper but once, and that was
when he couldn't stop two men fighting. I used to
1 See Journal, March 31, 1869.

374 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec. 1874

reckon on him not only as a guest but as a guide, since
he knew the country so well ; but he never could come
to me, nor I go to him. . .

I bought and read and lent ' 1 793 ^ ' — I like the sergeant,
not entirely. I think Lantenac's coming back finely
conceived. The whole of the end is Y&ry sublime and
worthy of the great writer ; but oh ! what a fool he
is in his jingles — ' Liberty is peace,' ' Congress is pro-
gress.' That is the maddening nonsense — specially
French, but originally theological. Whatever you do
in the way of aberration, avoid such ravings. ' Ever^^-
thing is that which it is and not another thing,' says
Bishop Butler. Benevolence is not self-love ; a thanks-
giving at St. Paul's is not a pilgrimage. None of your
nonsense, parsons and Frenchmen. Law-books, memoir-
books, Plato, Butler, save us from such delusions !

To A. D. Coleridge.

Dec. I, 1874.

I see vStrauss had written before he died a Life of
Ulrich von Hutten : the reviews thereof show that the
reviewers know nothing of the complete and valuable,
and almost readable collection of Ulrich von Hutten's
works (Latin), which I worked at for my lecture on the
Lutheran age ; therefore they do no justice to the man
who was really a knight errant, redressing wrongs as
cheerfully as Gareth and as completely as Napier of
Magclala.

I find that the Ciermans have no word for 'generous,'
and that must be convenient for Bismarck.

I am happy in being able to rqoice over German

' Quatn-vm^t'tr«iz4 by Victor Hugo.

Feb. 1875] < '93.' ULRICH VON HUTTEN 375

gocxlness and power, and also to feel every day lively
compassion and reoard for France.

It will be a ^oocl day when all Germans speak and
write English, and when all English Masters of Arts
talk Greek to the Greeks and Latin to the Itahans.

Halsdon, Feb. 14, 1875.

I lately read my old Journal kept at Cambridge
when I was an undergraduate. It is full of melancholy
scrupulosity and morbid combination of piety with
opinion -breeding. In those days we had a great diffi-
culty in sorting the contents of our minds : I got so
sick of it that when I was about tw^enty-five I used
to tell people that I declined having any ' opinions ' at
all — ' went in for facts.' Luckily, I never quite gave up
poetry.

But in my day we were not at Cambridge great boys,
as they have been since athletics prevailed over every -
thinor.

o

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Halsdon, Feb. 22, 1875
(thirty-third anniversary of my leaving school) .

What you say about the future Queen of Prussia
corresponds with ^vhat I guessed or believed, and points
to troubles which may, perhaps, abate the pride of the
Bismarckians. Yet they are mainly in the right. They
are making what Rossi called ' a compact state.* It
cannot be done without a good deal of bruising and
squeezing ; in this case I think there is less wrong-doing
than in any former case — say the Norman Conquest, the
Henry VIII Revolution, the Richelieu consolidation of
France, the Cavour amalgamation of the Italian States.

376 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

Great politicians must be judged with much latitude.
It is quite certain that Melbourne is one of the few
public men we have had who have not had justice done
them. The Queen can, no doubt, help greatly towards
making his claims known ; and her splendid reliance on
us, the readers, may perhaps carr}' her far enough to
take the step proposed. But it must be remembered
that the ghost of Lady Flora haunts that part of her
memory.

To Hon. R. B. Brett,

March 28, 1875.

Dr. Arnold in my youth taught me, and I never forget,
that the whole bias of human weakness goes towards
inaction, stagnation, selfishness ; therefore one should at
least profess, try to be, an improver, a ' world -betterer '
(Cambridge slang of my time).

A prophet like Carlyle has a sort of right to lift up
his voice against popular cries of reform, because he
can say ' Beware lest you be self-seekers all the while —
beware lest you set up idols and forget the permanent
goodness,' &c., &c.

But any time a lover of freedom, say John Milton or
John Mill, can with perfect consistency rebuke his liberal
comrades and tell them they are going astray.

It is incomparably satisfactory- to me to fmd that the
Frenchmen of this year have got the courage and par-
liamentary cohesiveness which were missing in 1789-92.
Instead of being helpless because their Mirabeau is not
respected, they now combine in a solid new product — the
revolutionary courage of Gambetta, the simple-minded
elasticity of Chanzy, the grave, solx^r, sad fidelity of
the best Orleanists. The Whigs of '88, and Burke too,
would bless them with joy. Vox the first time there

•^^75

] CARLYLE. FRENCH REPUBLICANS 377

are orood Frenchmen really q^rateful to England. I have
wished myself in the midst of a crowd under Manin's
statue at Venice.

To H. E. Ltixmoore.

Halsdon, May 5, 1875.

Your highly -valued letter came at the same time as
the news of the death of my only uncle, aged eighty-
nine, which I had to think about. Besides this it was
a day of guests, and a feast of soft air, and wanderings
with children whose e3^es were employed to note the
new growth of fern or campion.

To-day I was up in time for school, if there had been
school ; but it was only to go out in a boat with a future
Eton boy, son of an Eton master : the only boy of
thirteen that I ever knew accustomed to observe and
even to think about geology.

We went up my half mile of singularly quiet river,
buried between steep banks, where no man or beast,
only the river itself, interferes w^ith tree life : the only
bit of Torridge I ever heard of that has overhanging
chestnuts.

I have become quite well this last fortnight ; able to sit
on my pony w^hen she kicks at pigs. . .

Three w^eeks ago I was called on by Tory magistrates
to go at the tribune of Torrington plebs and prevent
his getting up a war about ager piiblicus w^ith the
excellent Mark Rolle : you can imagine the unique
pleasure it gave me to be asked to moderate the
passions of my fellow-townsmen, on the ground that
since my father there had been no one to keep them
in order. This job (in which I was as pacific as Mene-
nius) employed me really a good deal for a fortnight,

378 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

and gave me a notion of being in due time useful as an
adviser : anyhow, it was agreeable as far as it went.
Perhaps there will never be a similar job for me to
undertake : but in such a smoulderino^ life as mine even
one such transaction goes far towards deliverance from
apathy or fretfulness. . .

I was interested in Franz Josef, good soul, going to
Venice ; and had I been there I'd have cheered him.
Probably there never was so good a king : he seems
free from wicked pride, from intrigue, from vindictive-
ness, from suspicion. I believe his wife is admired for
her beauty still, and beloved also ; and what one reads
in the papers about Marguerite of Italy is ver^^ taking.

I suppose you went out to the island and heard Adria
beating on the outer side thereof, and from it looked
at Venice with the jewelled Alps behind : that is what
I remember as the best thing ever seen, except Aletsch
glacier at dawn. . .

Cornish told me to read, and I have read, a Russian
novel called Fathers and Sons. I can't see a grain of
wit or wisdom in it. It shows, so far as it shows any-
thing, that the upper class in Russia has no kind of
originality or substance — mere imitators, carried about
by every blast of fashion.

I wonder whether you feel, as I am tempted to feel,
rather grateful to vSpain for being a foil to the general
vulgarity of material progress : mind you, I am too
much of a Benthamite to indulge the feeling.

I have lately read your Lectures \ with Laleham and
Pepys plums in them. They stir me up again ; yet
I still think there should be a note on the sweeping"
statement about the cessation of religious art : if Philippe

' To the boys at Eton.

1875] HALSDON POLITICS. 16TH CENTURY 379

de Champatrne's portraits are not relig-ious, what palnting^
is ? Resides, Montalcmhcrt admits that there are traces
of the old relio^ion in Guercino : and I can't see how
Vandyke can be set down as belong-ing- to a sensual
school.

I fancy there is hardly any reference to painting in
Milton's writings,

I wonder whether any one in the ages of art took
delight in the forms of ships. Is there any good poetical
drawing of ships, under sail or not, earlier than the
Dutchmen's work of about 1600.^ If you ever go over
the seventeenth century again, please to consider whether
the dignified sterns of ships of the Cromwell time are
not worth mentioning after Whitehall or other stone
things.

The adorning of cannons is another art topic that
might be touched upon by those who delight in the
mediaeval armour. Was it not the same spirit that gave
us the smart guns of Malta, and others, such as you see
in the Tower of London and the Rotunda of Woolwich ?

Again, was it a time of dead art when they did things
of Grinling Gibbons' design in plaster for ceilings ?
Last Saturday I looked at the one in Torrington— not
Palmer's, but a much grander affair, date i77o(?).

Is Vv^edgwood's art mere revival ? Do not Minton's
plate -painters enjoy the same freedom of invention as
middle -age stone carvers ? . . .

I have a bit of a wish to explore Zurich (a town of
hardly any history), because it has been free from crime
and bigotry : also, in past times, if not now, a town of
hardly any art. They say there is music there now :
I fancy it is the abode of reason and moral health :
perhaps its only purging by passion ^of late times) has

38o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

been the great pitying- of Strasbourg besieged and of
Bourbaki's men hunted down.

Venice has for me a charm, but when I look for it
in Daru I can't find the secret of it ; the real glor>" of
it for me begins in 1848; and, after all, I feel more
affection towards Nuremberg-.

I wish you went abroad with some one not scholastic.
When I was last abroad the delight was to make friends
with men of business and all sorts of fellows that knew
no Greek. (One of them thought Gorg-o and Praxinoa
were little islands.) . . .

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

May 7, 1875.

Yesterday eight Dolton boys played cricket on my
ground, which, though small, about forty yards long and
twenty broad, is far sounder than Lower Club. The
eldest boy had for the fifth time his instructions for
making two maps, one of the parish, the other of the
village alone — all houses to be indicated by their num-
bers— the index will state the whereabouts : this is to
help towards sanitary inspection. I like to see a lad of
twelve cut his own wickets out of a hedge. One boy
declares he sees four pheasants, another says they are
gulls, a third finds a lark's nest ; two are readers, and
they carry off Scalp- Htiniers and Midshipman Easy.,
literature which I rank far above Henry VL

To Rev. E. D. Sto7te.

ifavS, 1875.

The last morning I took the boy out in Lalage at
7 a.m., the sun came in amongst the comfortable chestnut
trees and the untrodden steep banks where the river

1875] SPRING FLOWERS AT HALSDON 381

alone makes marks; a workman in Clinton's woods,
hi^h up on the hill, laughed at us —

' Wc were the first that ever burst * —

at least, Lalage is the first boat. The boy had a faint
hope of seeing an otter. I am well, though easily tired ;
health returning with soft rain makes me like being
out of doors many hours.

To Capt. A. H. Drummond,

Halsdon, May 16, 1875.

Last week, continued at this date, was a marvel of
paradise weather ; here we have no flies, no dust ; my
good bees went up into an upper chamber with one
mind ' like the primitive Church — no time lost in pursuing
a swarm from tree to tree. Five things came into bloom
yesterday — peony, laburnum, weigelia, pink thorn, and
guelder rose. White lilacs came out long before grey
or blue, not so fragrant. White broom is bewitching,
Australian broom is slowly recovering from rabbits,
does not flower yet. White iris delights me. I have
exactly one white stock, delicious ; all other stocks and
nearly all wallflowers (which our people call ' bloody
w^arriors ') died in the winter.

Of all things I have admired most the apple-blossom
just before opening, when rich pink — some of the old
trees have it richer or darker. Columbines, half wild,
are looking quite elegant and almost formal all along
the field path ; we are going to have a glorious show
of foxgloves on it ; that is the plant which beautifies
this country more than others that I know.

^ uiioOvfiaboy, Acts ii. i.

382 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

I am told the gorse or furze is better this year than
usual ; I delight in the bluebells ; I have picked a few
sweet Glory of Dijon roses, and the house is quite
illuminated by yellow Banksia.

To Rev. E. D. Stone,

Halsdon, May 20, 1875 (the crisis of the apple seasonX

It is part of the burden to be borne by our generation,
and it is only a set-off against incalculable comforts, that
honest scruples exclude men from those opportunities
of beneficent administration which will some day be
open to men not tied to opinions. But your repre-
sentatives hereafter will have, perhaps, a sharper strife
with the Sacerdotage — the divisions between those who
are and those who are not Thaumaturgic-dogmatic
hierophants will be in our countr\', as it is now in
France and Spain, too sharp and jagged for peace. . .

If the Church of En eland is treated like the Church
of Ireland we (the philosophers outside) fear there will
be an untempered esprit de corps among the emanci-
pated and discrowned clergymen, which will set them
collectively in a posture of rather fierce antagonism to
many well-meaning laymen. . .

I remember the first nut I could not crack in my
theology : it was the Thirteenth Article, about ' works
done before justification having the nature of sin.' I soon
concluded that neither Orders nor (consequently) matri-
mony, could be meant for me : yet I have always
thought most men happy who, having simply read
what they were told to read from Hecuba to Hooker,
swallowed the Thirty-nine Articles as they took rhubarb
from their mothers in childhood, and became 'priests'

I

1875] TAKING ORDERS. THE SACERDOTAGE 383

before they had time to reflect, like one in the dentist's
chair who has a tooth out before he ^ets fair warning.

The thin<r that I dwell upon is this : it is clear to me
that good men . . . forfeit by not taking Orders, not only
the loaves and fishes, but the blessed opportunities of
action, the sweet chances of comforting and straightening
most of the dear bruised reeds.

After all, the clergy are, I believe, happier, in that they
have access to the ingenuous humble folk and the
delicate enthusiastic folk, than are the philosophers.

Yet sometimes I allow^ myself to believe that even
I, beginning with an old crabbed and cankered mind,
have some access to children, to struggling women,
mothers of young and frail things, even to high-bred
and gracious people of my own age. Even sentiment
has a touch of natural pastorality in it. . .

I have a tw^inge of pain at hearing about Mrs. de
Rosen. Good Jenny will be the last of the Dames.
Damery will expire with a sweet smell. I wish British
monarchy would similarly pass away with Victoria.

To Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, May 31, 1875.

I sent you yesterday in my last paper boxes some
specimens of the many good things that adorn this wild
place ; it is the first dry May that has blessed the azaleas
(a word which seems to mean ' dry ') since they have
been multiplied and set out ; therefore I am struck with
a new blaze of yellows, at least three different yellows,
and a great fragrance from that kind which resembles
honeysuckle. For the scent's sake they please me more
than the proud masses of rhododendrons, but they too

384 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [J

UNE

are quite superb ; altogether out of keeping with the
poverty and decotisu look of the place. At the same
time there are several arches loaded with French honey-
suckle, while clematis lights up the front of the house
and several other parts. Weigelia is out in glory — not
to speak of the boule-de-neige {^vl^A'^v roses), laburnum,
lilacs of tw^o kinds, chestnut of two colours, red thorns,
ribes, white broom, Australian broom.

Good old Philip is daintily arranging his hoarded
fuchsias where the ' bulbs ' were, which now go indoors
to dry up ; he puts his Golden Feather, a new thing to
him, round his geraniums. Once or twice a week some
one comes who knows, and praises the garden, and
I repeat the compliments to Philip. Once a week we
give away in Torrington lettuces and flowers.

On Monday I had three little girls playing soft cricket
here, and I taught them all the masked cupboards for
hide and seek : the choice thing for girls is to go up the j
ladders and peep at the pigeons' nests to count the
eggs therein. ^

To Rev. C. W. Furse.

Halsdon, June 3, 1875.

Many poor folks and some less poor take away gladly
our little pots of myrtle or lemon plant and seedlings.
Philip silently prepares fresh dozens of plants for them.
I like visits paid by women shut up all the weekdays,
such as Widow Lyne and Widow Heard (baker), who
come because their children draw them — introduced by
their children. . .

Wc shall soon get your white clematis and my honey-
suckle over the walls of half the houses in Beaford
and Dolton.

1875] PREACHING 385

7^0 II. O. Sturgis.

Halsdon, 1875.
Last week wc were in parent pride, Philip and I, giving^
away plants to Beaford people, and we are soon to have
the honour of furnishing Dolton churchyard with ever-
green shrubs and creepers ; this you see is a thing that
I can do even now that I am so poor. I am to have
given me fifty little rhododendrons from Windsor Park,
and it will be fun to tell the people they are the
Queen s own.

To Rev. C. W. Ficrse,

Juite^, 1875.

. . . They have been writing in the Times about

young men preaching: to us last Sunday preached,

on the imitation of childhood : nothing could be feebler
than his analysis, yet I said, as E. said, that it was the
right kind of preaching: it was the young man uttering
himself, doing fair justice to his own character, which
but for the pulpit would be latent. He talked to us,
though timidly, yet openly. It is too silly to say that
young parsons are not to preach till they have experi-
ence : if they are men of good heart they are able to
make it tell in preaching. . . I conceive that there are
probably many hundreds of young men who preach
more or less well by virtue of simple self- utterance.

And this is the secret of high oratory : Pericles,
Mr. Pitt, Sir R. Peel, C. Sumner, could be known and
felt only by speaking: their characters shone through
the words. Speaking roughly, curates have the oppor-
tunities, which no other men under thirty get, of letting
out what is best in them.

C c

386 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

To Hon. R. B. Breti.

Halsdon, June 3, 4, 1875.

I fancy the Rev. Edward Coleridge and his very
amiable wife wish to come here ; they like me. It
would be interesting- to me to see this ' abode of health
and pure reason,' as Paul calls it, soothing an old man
who is broken by the sudden death of his eldest son.
The old man helped me in my business and gave me
sympathy in time of need, and after many years of off
and on he has got to calling me his ' dear old friend ' ;
he used to have hundreds of dear friends of all kinds ;
he floated in fashion, influences, art, gardening, success :
he picks a crooked stick at the end of the lane. I tried
to get Governor Eyre down to Ash, in vain. He would
have been more of a neighbour to me, he would have
been to me something like what Grove was. I am dis-
appointed ; for once I had a chance of talking with
a man of heroic mould and grand plans.

Read in Grote or Plutarch how Pericles, the type of
Mr. Pitt, used to send down Ephialtes to make the lesser
motions for him in the assembly. Reserve, economy of
power, latency, without formal affectation of prudence,
of course without cowardice or undue love of popularity
or undue display of teachableness : this is to be aimed
at. . .

I shall be obliged to you if you will point out to the
croakers that in time of peace we must not expect young
men who like real employment with progress and increase
of pay as they rise in skilled labour. We can hardly
expect any but idlj men to go into the regular infantry.
All right, if the war lasts a year or two ; but not, if we
are to contend with those who mobilize in a fortnight
and dictate a treaty after two months. . .

1875] GOVERNOR EYRE. THE ARMY 387

^ The Army is and ou|T;-ht to be the place for idle men,
both ofiicers and privates. . . The Army is also a great
and good reformatory- for rowdies ; thousands of men
who would be dangerous are held in it under restraint ;
of these I suppose a good many are made safe men.
But in a war of any duration which cut up our trade
we should find swarms of artizans, miners, seamen, clerks,
wanting pay, and seeing in the Army easy open paths
to honour and emolument.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Halsdon, 1875.

If I can sell my colt I shall be able to go to Greece in
March, back in mid May. I am ver)^ ' wishful ' to see
the Attic sky and the Delphian bays and flowers, not
the Berlin-Mycenae antiques. It seems feeble to read
and write Greek, and not to -know the Greeks and their
brilliant air.

What 's the good of being * without encumbrances ' if
one can't go to Parnassus and Ithome and Acrocorinthus '^

How wretchedly soft and muddy you must be in that
vile valley. Here it is quite an endurable softness and
roughness too. I had blue lightning on the 13th which
played coltish tricks with an iron hurdle.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, June 8, 1875.

Manning and Capel are dead long ago, and the five
pigs presented to me by Pope Joan w^ould be called
after eminent Russians, persecutors, and liars, only I have
become fond of pigs. Pope Joan is quite friendly —
I scratch her back with a curry-comb. . .

Yes, I highly applaud vS. Lyttelton s going to New

^ From another letter.
C C 2

388 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

Zealand. I want to go to Fiji and rule an island like
Sancho Panza, make roads and wells ; meanwhile, I roll
my cricket ground.

To Ho7t. R. B. Brett.

Halsdon, June 25, 1875.

Elliot writes me a delightful account of an English
soldier farmer, worshipped by his poor neighbours in
Macedonia ; and of the starving Phrygians crying out
' When is the Queen of England coming to reign over
us?' ... In solitude one's country is sun and moon, wife
and child.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Halsdon, July 8, 1875.

The water is so pure, smooth, weedless, embosomed
in chestnuts, oaks, sycamores, that it would give a new
touch of sentiment to people used to the Thames, though
there was no sun, no kingfisher, no loosestrife. Each
trip seemed to me a dip into nature, and each passenger
a happy ' fair saint.' . .

Ten days ago I had another party. . . We ate biscuits,

chocolate and cherries on the Osmunda Rock under

Abbot's Hill, and found the columbine growing close

by, just as you saw it in '']2. We had the donkey to

help us, and a flask of Marsala. After the long walk

and our supper-tea the little girls ran races, and we four

woke the famous echo on the hill to the south of the

house.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

London, Monday, July 19, 1875.

We delighted together in ' vSchool Revisited'/ which
gave me absolute pure pleasure with no sorrow. ' Little

' G. D. Leslie's picture at the Academy.

t

1875] n^ATER PARTY. ROYAL ACADEMY 389

F.itima,'the ' Minuet \' the * Slincrcr 2,' ' Dendera,' Goodall's
three Egypt thincrs, Brett's 'Channel Islands,' Poynter's

* Golden A<i;-e,' 'Joy and iMisery,' suited us both ecjually ;
both equally hated ' Quatre Bnis,' which is a foul cari-
cature and an insult to soldiers; we both liked, or at
least were interested moderately in, Philippoteaux's

* Waterloo,' but the man was a wretch who waved his
sword and let his horse rear ; he should have left his
sword in the sheath, and rammed his horse with both
hands and both heels at the live fence ; the cavalry
weapon ag-ainst unbroken infantry is the horse. Let
one man make a hole, live or die in it, the square is
pierced. Germans did it at Salamanca. I'd like to end
my life that way, if the square were made of Russian
diplomats, motherless, wifeless, and sisterless. Get a
blind man to lead the charge, say Fawcett, or a man
with no hands, say Kavanagh.

Some day there will be a terrible answer given by
a lump of English horsemen to all the foreigners' sneers
at our little army. As I go along that great sweep of
hard smooth battle-ground near Andover I have a little
wish to see a Bismarckian army there and our hunting
men let loose on it.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Oxford, August 2, 1875.

... I beg you will not say or think that I recommend
Balzac indiscriminately. I do not praise him as our
fanatics praise Shakespeare. Balzac has hardly any
dramatic skill ; he has a dreadfully hea\y hand, bad
touch, morbid love of horrors, insincere admiration of
Catholicism and Royalism.

* Millais, ^ Leighton.

390 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

Read L'Ejtvers de I'Hisioire Co7itemporaine ; Gau-
dissart^ Parts I and 11 ; Aledecm de Cainpagfie ; Cure
de Campagne ; Colonel Charras. . .

I have been to the spot where Newman's snapdragons
grew till the slugs picked them aU, and I alone of all
tourists asked for Isaac Williams's rooms in the same
plain litde college.

To A, D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, Aug. 29, 1875.

I am glad to hear your uncle ^ is well enough to go
a-visiting. I wish I heard of his being the guest of
some of the very eminent men whose verses and themes
he used to treat so handsomely ; it always perplexes me
that whereas thirty years ago he had swarms of the best
men and women as friends and coadjutors, and helped
to educate scores of worthy, thoughtful men, neverthe-
less when he retired to that ideal parsonage he seemed
to retire also from sympathies and alliances. That
admirable Oxford galaxy of churchmen and philan-
thropes seems to have dissolved— improved as the world
is, we have not kept up, as far as I can judge, the high
strain of blood which one may associate with such names
as Sir W. Heathcote, Bishops Field and Hamilton, the
late Sir Thomas Acland, Sir James Wigram, Hope
Scott, &c., &c. . .

To P. War re Cornish.

Halsdon, Sept. 3, 1875.

I am preparing for the time when I shall not be able
to write : gout begins to attack my right hand. There
will be about four people sorry when I am unable to

* Rev. Edward Coleridge.

1875] OXFORD MOVEMENT. ' LES MISERABLES' 391

write to them ; but the goats and cows won't find out
the chaiiLij-e. . .

I have twice in my life, ten or twelve years apart,
been melted, prostrated and yet comforted by the
Miscrablcs : it is a book which, if compared at all,
I compare with Job, with Infcyno^ with Ltccrctms ; not
with any play. It is a pathological w'ork. It is almost
a synoptic view of human suffering. Marius may be
a fool, that is part of the misery — he is not set up as
a hero ; he is beloved by the poor lean girl who gets
shot ; I pity her. He is beloved by the girl who is dear
to Jean \"aljean, and so he gives Jean \^aljean the oppor-
tunity of self-denial at the end. I don't feel sure that
it would have been a much better book had Marius been
sensible. The greatest fault in the book you do not
notice : it is the want of identity in the convict of the
first volume and the Monsieur-manufacturer. The break
is too violent.

The book is a sort of Gospel of self-redemption, and
it will, I hope, long continue to give some little relief to
those who, having offended against society, nevertheless
condnue to keep loving hearts, and though again and
again assailed by the defenders of virtue, do not cease
to try to be good to other wretches.

To Hon. R. B. Brett

Halsdon, Sept. 13, 1875.

I w^ent, to please Whale ^, to his tithe dinner to-day,
and sat there three hours. We had a very interesting
little debate about a harvest thanksgiving. I acted as
moderator between Whale and his churchwarden, an old

^ Rector of Dolton.

392 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

freeholder, who lives at the other end of the parish.
There are three sweet young men, Wrru Budd (the
miller), young George Heaman and his brother John.
I made the farmers laugh, and got on very well with
them, though I did not talk much.

I am at present very much impressed with Balzac's
posy, raison m oblige. It seems possible, I even think
my present life proves it, to obey reason poetically.
After being so long alone, or only with uneducated
people, it might have been expected I should be found
in London or in Yorkshire impracticable. . . I used to
think Wordsworth must have become a ninny living in
the country, reading his own poems. It seems actually
likely that one should become eccentric up to lunacy
in solitary inactivity.

To Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, Sept. i6, 1875.

I had to sit three hours on Monday at the tithe-dinner,
debating part of the time whether it was Puseyism to
bring a wheatsheaf into church for harv^est-home wor-
ship ; and again to-day I had to attend a business
meeting about it and report the result to Whale, and
we are to have the feast. It will cost £^^ and it will be
tea for hundreds. The Baptist minister is to be invited,
. . . and the Dissenters are coming to church. . .

I have read a good deal more of Wilhclnt Mcister^
and looked for the fifth or tenth time at Carlyle's
article on Goethe. I should like some one to ask Carlyle,
and to tell me, how Wcythcr (or IVerier) is a more
important book, more the parent of modern books, than
the Nouvcllc Ilcloise.

1875] GOETHE AND SCOTT 393

Anyhow, the Goethe epoch is 1773, and he is to me
a classic as remote as Goldsmith and Miss Kurney. But
then he, unlike Carlyle and many important or popular
En<i^lish authors, is a truly classical standard for his
own people. I submit that they have no other, and
that he is not quite so live a fountain to them as
Shakespeare is.

His Theresas, Natalias, Aurelias, Jarnos, Lotharios
are to me mere magic-lantern slides, and I doubt whether
any one of you who pin your faith on Goethe ever wept
at the death of Mignon, whom I am told to accept as the
one ' character ' that he has created.

No eminent prophet-preacher is so self-contradictory
as Carlyle. I believe it was a personal motive, gratitude
for some kindness, that set him on touting this serene
egotist.

Wilhelm Meister seems to me stuffed with ' formulas,'
and wholly devoid of manly virtue and true sentiment.
If Goethe had been a Frenchman, what would you
take as an extract from his mind that w^ould be re-
freshing or even wholesome ? Yet it is in language only
that he is a German. Germans are Luther, Bismarck,
Niebuhr, Liebig, Humboldt, Grimm, Beethoven.

One of Carlyle's strong points is that Gotz von Ber-
lichmgen set Walter Scott going. How long did that
inspiration tell on him ?

I remember Scott's admitting that In Fenella he tried
an imitation of Mignon : but he is not proud of the
performance. As far as I can judge, he owed as much
to Burger and Fouque as to Goethe. However, what
I should like to point out to Carlyle is that the Germans
are Gibeonites to the conquerors of Canaan, to the two
^ruly brilliant literary nations of \\^estern Europe.

394 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

To A. D. Coleridge.

1875.

I judge Shakespeare by the models found In Shake-
speare. If Hamlet and The Tempest are, as I believe,
first-rate poetical plays, their author is a first-rate dra-
matist ; if so, he must himself smile at those who call
Lear or Cymbelme a fine play. . . I am told that
the best company in London has just failed to make
the Merchant of Venice draw. I don't at all wonder ;
though the poem abounds in fine thinking and excellent
verse and even contains very good characters, yet the
main action is too grossly foolish to make the play
a really good play.

I think Othello nearly as good as it was possible for
anything to be before the human mind had by evolu-
tion become capable of Kenilworth or Marion de
Lorme. Othello, though he ultimately errs, is not at
all a fool ; he has a fine healthy trustful heart ; he is
tragically led into ar^]^ Tie/HTieVeia. It would have been
nearer perfection if lago's tricks had been still more
cleverly contrived than they are — in other words if
lago was as clever as Varney.

I maintain that Ke72ilworth gives us a new standard
of art. The stupidity of the Britons is shown by their
not owning it to be a wonderfully good thing — plot,
dialogue, costume, accessories, all magnificent.

To Rev. E. D. Stone,

May, 1875.

I have been reading Shakespeare and Iliad, idly, but
with absolutely independent judgement. . . Next to the
astonishing creation o{ character s^txxhX I suppose Shake-
speare has created as many as all the Germans, French,

1875] SHAKESPEARE 395

Italians and Spaniards put toj[^cthcr — (is it not literally
true?): next to this he is to he praised for a o-rcat
mass of pure poetry, as in Ronico^ Midsjimmer NiglUs
Vycam, The Tejiipesl^ As You Like it\ thirdly, for
a very few j^ood structures of plot, such as The Tempest^
Othello^ and Havilct. . .

The notion that Shakespeare is a consummate artist,
when in such a grand work as Othello he makes lago
show all his cards at every deal, that he is an artist in
the way Virgil or Sophocles or a modern Frenchman
is, this makes me nearly angry. . .

Stupidity, pettiness, trifling, which bored one forty
years ago, in the notes on Euripides, &c., now rule
in Shakespearedom. By all means study and glorify
his splendid works, but why on earth potter over his
failures, his tumbled limp cravats, his make-shifts,
his fill-up, his shoddy.

For the lads it is best to do as they did some years
back, pick out The Tempest and Jiilitis Ccesar. They
are both noble and truly lofty.

To Rev. E. D. Stone,

Sept. 21, 1875.

I wish for a rational, untranscendental criticism of
Shakespeare, such as Hallam began in his Literature :
he kept his balance when others were carried away
by S. T. C. and the Germans. I remember a young
man of no learning saying to me twenty years ago of
Winter's Tale : ' Though I think it a bad play, I am
going to see it acted.' It was a flash of good sense, his
quietly daring to call any one of Shakespeare's things
a ' bad play.' It delivered me, once for all, from the
prevalent superstition. . . JVie Tempest is unique ; if

396 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

Vfrg-il had written a play, there might have been some-
thing to compare with The Tei7tpest.

As a poet, apart from dramatic skill, Shakespeare is
portentously good. In the evolution of human conscious-
ness his appearance is of the nature of what is called
in geology a ' catastrophe,' i. e. a violent change, which
you cannot expect to see repeated. The break from
Montaigne and Cervantes and Ariosto and Marlowe to
Shakespeare is unparalleled, unless it is admitted that the
Iliad and Odyssey came out in one lifetime, full-blown,
from a mass of inferior narrative — which I think very
probable.

Admitting this, I do not admit that there is anything
so transcendental, or superhuman, in Shakespeare as to
justify the peculiar reverence with which he has been
treated in our country for a hundred years by all except
Dr. Johnson and Hallam : I hold to their way of treating
him.

It seems to me susceptible of proof that he grew out
of the classic stock, that is to say, that he drew from
Plutarch, Ovid, Horace, and even from Virgil, through
translations in a great measure, but also through a good
knowledge of Latin.

I believe that he read Boccaccio, Chaucer, Montaigne,
&c., with an eye to business, just as I, when in harness,
used to read all sorts of things hastily just to get sub-
jects for verses.

I believe that he would have laughed at any one who
thought he meant to pin his name and fame on such
things as Richard 11^ Richard I 11^ Henry VI 11^ Twelfth
Niq/iI, Measure /or Measure.

I believe tliat when released from the professional
work of making up things for the theatre he never read

1875] SHAKESPEARE 397

over the t^^reat bulk of his plays, but did read and take
pleasure in his best thine["s — Hamlet^ The Taiipest^
Othello^ Midsmnincr Nighfs Drcain^ As Yoic Like It^
Teaming of the Shrezu.

It seems to me probable that the superstition about
this great poet has been a g;reat cause of the English
inferiority in the drama: our people have had a false
standard of drama. The rii^ht standard is to be found
in Hcr)ia7n and Lc Roi s'anitise. Qicee^t Mary is an
orthodox play : considering- the difficulties, Tennyson
has conformed laudably to the type ; he has surpassed
his fellows in fine thinking, and has at the same time
built up a real play ; and I hope and trust it will act

jwell, and draw" the crowds that will not be drawm by

:SO uninteresting a play (though full of high poetry) as

\ The Merchant of Venice.

I . Tennyson is what Virgil would have been had he
lived now. Down w^ith the intrudino^ barbarians! Last
week I stood on Ludlow Castle and thought of Comus.

I To F. Warre Cornish.

Sept. 21, 1875.

I ... We should never come to any understanding
about plays and poems if w^e w^ent on for ever. . .

What I observe and condemn is that, in spite of
the wholesome rational resistance of George III and
Dr. Johnson, the writer has been deified : a strained,

inon-natural interpretation, drawn from the Germans and
S. T. C., has, in spite of Hallam, prevailed.

I find many of the plays barely readable. I stoutly
maintain that they were all meant to be acted, and
I don't believe they were all of them acted successfully.
If they were, that can be accounted for, not by the

398 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

superiority of the Elizabeth -James people to the Vic-
torian people, but by their having no standard of
dramatic skill. I suppose the Spenser- Sidney -Fairfax
people had a delight in poetry such as none of you
have nowadays (I say you, for I am far more easy to
please), and I can with pleasure imagine them thoroughly
enjoying Rosalind and Juliet and Titania for the poetry :
and I believe that as spoken eloquence is a necessary
lowering of philosophy, so drama is a lowering, to get
the tribal self, the collective ego, roused and thrilled,
a lowering of the poet's tone. As a poet Shakespeare
moves me; as a dramatist less. I once saw HaTnlet
acted — I had rather not see it again ; whereas I should
like to see (perhaps I should say to hear, for I miss the
play of face) Rtcy Bias, Marion de Lorme, and things
by Scribe, Dumas, and Sardou.

I have formerly thought I should like to see gentle-
folks act Tatning of the Shrew, of course as a mere
trifle. I wonder what Scribe thought of it. . .

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Sept. 25, 1875.

I am becoming too timid to scoff, but there was a time
when I should have scoffed at the fuss made about
Macbeth. As it is I content myself with saying it is
a Porte St. Martin play. . . I am of the same opinion as
ever, that he (Shakespeare) did his best, did all he could,
and beat the world, in The Tempest.

To Lady Pollock.

Oct. 4, 1875.
Giving up plot, then I speak of the main idea*:
I suppose it is this, or at least I have a right to find

' TurgcncfT's Lisa.

i875] SHAKESPEARE. V. HUGO. TURGENEFF 399

this, in any talc of love and pain written by any one
of our stranc^c time; that the human heart has become,
and will, for aught I can see, continue to be, too
susceptible — that is to say, it is hard on man to be
ephemeral with such a capacity for loving : it seems
a cruel thing to let people arrive at this stage of in-
tensified lovingness ; one may fairly envy the peasant
or the dove.

Secondly, the story, like many others, bears witness
to the bitter pain of our age, the divergence of man
tlie unbeliever from woman the believer.

Do you know Mrs. Browning's lines on the sea-mew }
She fancies the bird when caged has caught from man
love and misery. So has stupid Russia caught the
aristocratic or intellectual plague.

Perhaps I shall think more compassionately of that
flat land now that I know it has a ' Lise ' in one of its
convents.

I suppose you all say Marfa is an original character :
anyhow, I like her, and she almost makes me cry once
or twice.

Personally I agree with Lavretzky, only I never, like
him, even hoped or tried to be young or happy — at
least only in a superficial way.

As to the literary art ... is not the musician left
unfinished .-^ At times he is very interesting. The
coincidence of his successful music-making wnth the
happy love-making is pretty enough, though rather
too mesmeric for my taste. There is too much music,
both piano and nightingale, in the book. . . Tea is
mentioned too often ; and oh, those Saints ! they sicken
me. . .

However, I agree w^ith Montalembert in preferring the

400 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

Poles: once in my life I stood among his friends at
St. Clotilde to hear a sermon on the wrongs of Poland,
and dropt a Nap. into a velvet bag held by a sweet,
fine St. Germain lady.

To Hon, R. B. Brett.

Oct. 17, 1875.

I read in that house Lord Houghton's Monographs:
in that elaborate and hardly honest book there was one
thing truly taking, Lady Duff Gordon's account of her
visits to H. Heine. Since I came home I have been
reading Heine's scraps, prose — full of bitter wit, not
much else ; as a Jew he interests me, not much as a
German. I w^ish I had a set of good French translations
of German books. Ever since I found Ouida charming
in French i^Dettx pet its Sabots) I fancy French would
make me relish even the Sorrozvs of Wert her or Goethe's
epigrams or his Elective Affinities. The German lan-
guage ought to be abolished as a written language,
becjueathing a few score words to the English tongue.

To H. E. Ltixmoore.

Halsdon, Oct. 24, 1875.

I believe the departure of Oscar Browning will be
resented by scores of kindly, intelligent young men to
whom he has freely given all that he had to give of
those good things of the mind which the old routiners
thought should be reserved for Masters of Arts. Many
of the best Eton fellows are, I imagine, honestly grateful
to him for a generous, respectful and affectionate treat-
ment ; some boys will survive his departure and will
miss him. 1 daresay among those boys will be a few
sweet-hearted enthusiasts : they are the people that used

,875] TENNYSON. VIRGIL 401

to be stirved at l^^ton. IT.ippily there are plenty — no,
a fair sprinklinq^ — of yoiinir teachers who so far resemble
B. as to make themselves, the best parts of them-
selves, known to the lads : that Is the new art or new
growth in schools. It is, I think, not less than a critical
chang-e in education, though, being unconnected with
creeds, it has not yet found its biographical historian. . .

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Halsdon, Oct. 31, 1875.

For the last three days I find my head running, as
on a tune, on these few words : ' Je meurs en regrettant
ma sceur Alex. Simon, et ma bien aimee Annie Rowan,'
I written by a young French sailor and put into a bottle
, with English farewells. I keep on wishing to hear of
I Annie Rowan, and it is a delicious name, and a French-
man in love with a Scottish maid is quite a hero of
romance ^.

To F. War re Cornish.

Halsdon, 1875.

After so much tossing to and fro I cast anchor on
Tennyson as the representative of Virgil, on France
as the representative of Augustan Rome, on Darwin as
wiser than Mill, on the law and the science of my own
time, of my own nation, which gathers up and does
justice to all the products of German penetration, on
the synthesis of English and French thought, on re-
publics, once more glorified by Victor Hugo and
Swinburne. This last is the only extravagance or
vehemence, I think, that has any charm for me. . .

You would be surprised to see how well I get on
with litde girls — children of eight and ten. There is

* See lonica, II. * A poor French sailor's Scottish sweetheart,' 1876.

Dd

402 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

very little to study in them : they give me something
new in the way of refreshment.

You men who have daughters must be self- tormentors
if you are not happy. It is, however, possible to live
satisfactorily without even tr^ ing to be happy.

I am going to make a bit of a speech now at our
harvest home. It rains handsomely : my flowers were
cut in time and are safe in the church.

To B. Holland.

Nov. 2, 1875.

At college there is very much to be gained by listening
to third year men. Bachelors of Arts, and those few
older men who talk openly to young people.

For instance, you would probably like to go to the
hospitable, leisurely, home-like rooms of Bradshaw of
Kings, the Public Librarian, w^ho for twenty-five years
has made tea for self-invited undergrads, and has done
a world of good without taking any trouble to do it.
He is utterly devoid of calculation, worldliness, conceit,
grasping, manoeuvring, love of power. He is a pure
old-fashioned literary man, very affectionate, though
not obtrusively so, with a lady's subtlety of observation,
and with singular fidelity to friends. I shall ask Sturgis
to take you to Bradshaw, and he will make you feel
at home there.

You do right to go to the Union : it is a mixed set
of men, and it is a place for rough give and take, and ,
so it braces a man for combat. It is a school of rough
criticism and a place for ck'positing those crudities which
slough off a growing mind. It is a pity to shrink from
it out of mere fastidiousness, as the cleverest men in my
day (your imcle's clay) used to do.

1875] HENRY BRADSIIAW. CAMBRIDGE 403

If you «'irc asked to join any smaller society for debate
or I he like, as a general rule it is expedient to accejjt
tile proposal.

The thino; to be avoided is spending every evening In
the same set of freshmen, discussing the topics of the
day, chiefly athletic events and predictions.

To H. O. Sittrgis.

Halsdon, I^ov. 2, 1875,

The real use of Cambridge and Oxford is to inspirit
and tie up (as my plants are tied to stakes against winds)
the good generous hearts which sweeten the nation.
You all get together in companies and battalia, and you
believe for three or four years in the supremacy of good
intentions ; and we poor peasants and grimy towns-
people are the better for the going forth of your
sharpshooters. The Universities are highland reservoirs
of spring waters gathered — the springs of youth.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Halsdon, Nov. 9, 1875.

Even he, a mere shadow, can be quite happy at Cam-
bridge ; it is his innings, as it is for every one. He can
score impressions, conceptions, attachments, fine hopes.
It is a blessed season even for the bloodless and meagre.
No more bullying, no fussing of mother or aunt. Let
him warm his hands at your fireplace ; no doubt he will
learn to laugh cheerfully there. He will discover that
i mankind is good-natured and makes room for him ; he
i will be avenged on the horrible schools and the morti-
fications of boyhood. . .

The ' waif ' ' appears in the flesh, or rather in the bone

^ An invalid boy at Dolton.
D d 2

404 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

and skin, the aching- bone and the shivering- skin. . .
The odd thing is that it is only in answer to leading
questions that he tells me of this. There is no habit of
retrospection with these people : it is an attitude they
can be put into at the will of the questioner. I don't
perceive in him any forecast of evil or good to come.
I can't say for certain that he relies on me or on any one,
or feels any need of a protector. Yet he is as old as the
naval cadets when they go to sea in their pride and
anguish. It is a difference of breeding. These poor people
have affections but not ' nerves,' not hig-h wrouorht
sensibilities.

To Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, Dolton, Nov. 18, 1875.

I perceive the Revue speaking of Wilhelm Meister
as the masterpiece ; the lovers of Goethe ought to agree
together and make out the canon.

That Goethe was himself in a mere twilight of litera-
ture seems to me to be proved by his high esteem for
the Vicar 0/ Wakefield . . . and his high conception
of Byron's importance. I don't so much mean that he
was a poor judge, only (or rather) that he had few
good things before him to pick from, and that we,
the dwarfs, have by the growth of man outgrown
the German giant of seventy years ago. To put it
another way, I think that we who lived since the
Coini'dic Huniaine was constructed, and have had forty
years of Victor Hugo and Tennyson, cannot be expected
to look upon Goethe otherwise than on Rousseau,
hardly otherwise than on Pope. I doubt whether in the
history of literature or of general (not German) progress
Goethe is so important a person as Rousseau or Voltaire.

.875] GOETHE. BALZAC. SCOTT 405

C.irlyle has failed to prove that he is, and it is a mere
whim or accident that makes Carlyle treat him in par-
ticular as a ' more divine mind.' Upon Carlylc's own
principles I maintain that l^alzac is much more of a
thinker and teacher. Did you ever read the Lys dans
la Vallcc} It is his masterpiece, and was the favourite
book of the lamented Lady Aimee Desclee (bother the
accents). It has things in it that pucker the lips and
raise the gorg-e, but it is a revelation.

I have been reading two exquisite little books which
can give no offence or pain, Peinme Genarite and
Atang ... by G. Droz. He has a new art. Unlike the
laborious elephant Balzac, he leaves things half told,
leaves much for the reader to w^ork out for himself.
He obeys every sound rule of Horace's Art of Poetry
better than any writer known to me. He has a good
heart and he makes one happy.

Likewise I have been reading (not for the first time)
Ronans Well. I was surprised in the first, less in the
second volume, with the finish, neatness, brilliancy,
pointedness of the style. It has hardly any of Scott's
usual verbosity and diffuseness of description and intro-
duction. The hero is, I think, admirable and almost
tragically interesting, though not up to the mark of
Scott's best hero Tressilian, or the second best, Roland
Graeme. . . Ronan's Well came out in Scott's year of
zenith happiness — the year of my birth.

To Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, Nov. 21, 1875.

It is a comfort to hear about Darwin. There is in the
Remains of S. T. Coleridge a passage that I used to feel,
in which he muses on the peaceful meeting in Paradise

4o6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

of Milton and Jeremy Taylor, and some other pair of
antagonists from the beautiful Civil War. I wish they
could find the meeting-place in Chalfont or Bunhill
Fields, or some other place where one pokes the fire.

Canning shed tears for Castlereagh (I was told this by
an eye-witness).

It is better than Bach or Titian, this image of the
rugged old prophet ceasing to growl before the philo-
sopher-saint ^ Happy is the man that brought them
together. In Tyndall's Address there was, I remember,
a stirring lament for Carlyle's great mistake in railing
against science. The goodness of Darwin makes all the
difference to us, scattered isolated gatherers of the crumbs
that fall from the feast of science. It is to me now what
the holiness of J. H. Newman used to be (I must not say
to me, but) to my college friends. And I have seen and
listened to Faraday.

To H. O. Sttirgis.

Halsdon, Nov. 21, 1875.

What puts one off is not so much unamiable temper
as vulgarity. Did you ever read Miss Martineau's Deer-
brook ? In it there is a splendid passage about unami-
ableness. . . I have never stood it well — don't know that
I could — with a female ; but with males I have put up
with it often, with grown-up males besides boys. . .
Where there is intellect it is, I think, not so very hard
to cure. . .

It is very important to guard against tricks. I suppose
Cromwell, Dr. Johnson, Carlyle are victims of trick
on a grand scale. I dare say St. Paul, when he was

y

• Carlyle and Darwin.

1875] CARLYLE AND DARWIN. LESSEPS 407

* minded to go afoot,' was escaping- some one who bored
him on the ship, and as he walked through the Troad
he set himself to cure the irritation which might, if
unchecked, cost him another such friend as Barnabas.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Dec. 5, 1875.

That day we sat in and talked. I found my notions
rapidly crystallizing as I dropped them into his sound
mind ; I formulated several bits of politics offhand, new
to myself. This is the great privilege I have still — what
I used to enjoy as a teacher, the sudden originating of
things whilst talking; to do this is the one thing that
compensates for great privations. . .

I can't, morally, afford to read the World regularly any
more than the Pall Mall. What I have to strive to keep
is a certain orderliness of mind, the absence of gnarls
or knots in the old stem — sanity, charity, sobriety, such

as are needed for the reclaiming of and the guidance

of our new relieving officer.

To Hon. F. L. Wood.

Halsdon, Dec. 8, 1875.

I am told that Lord Derby never writes a despatch ;
he indicates his notion to Sanderson, who turns it mto
a document. If Derby had any range of thought he
would make friends with old Lesseps. You see, the
French naturally say, ' You tried to prevent the Canal
being cut ; then you did all you could to prevent the
makers of it from getting a dividend ; then you take
advantage of the depreciation of their shares, and you
play cuckoo to our nest.'

4o8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

Derby should not leave it to newspapers to soothe the
French ; he ought to go out of his way to explain to
them that he wishes for their alliance above any other.
Is it not right to say so ?

He, the Queen, we, ought to take great pains to show
them that we admire their endeavours. They and we
alone go on wath fine schemes for the good of barbarous
lands — Asia and Africa. They believe and say that they
are more disinterested and generous than we are ; they
take the lead in converting the Chinese, we marched
with them to Pekin ; whilst we tr^^ for overland route
through Burmah, they explore all the coast of Annam,
Cambodia, Tonquin. What does Germany do, what
does Russia do that is not purely businesslike ?

This business with the Khedive is delightful if we go
through with it, go on buying out the shareholders, treat
Ismail as an Indian rajah ; but it will be a sad thing if
through dulness, reticence, mauvaise hortte^ Derby-
dulness, we estrange the French. We should build a
new transport for India and call it Lesseps. He is
a second Columbus.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Castlk Hill, North Devon,

Dec. 14, 1875.

Just trying to read Lanfrey's Napoleon^ a book I find
in the bedroom amongst Lord Ebrington's prizes. Bun-
sen's Life I tried ; I learnt from it that that eminent man,
the prince of the soft -heads, died in four languages; his
jaculations and valedictory gasps were Latin, English,
French, and Prussian — what we used to call altitu-
dinizing. . .

1875] WHIGGERY. BVNSEN 409

7>; Hon. A\ H. nrcff.

IIai.sdon, Dec. 22, 1875,

The basis of Whicirerv or liioh statesmanship, as
against despotism and also against management by
phobies (either Tory phobies or popular phobies), is
that which is said to have been the lifelong idea of
the late Charles de Remusat, ' faith in human reason.'

The Whig says, ' You, my adversaries, are in a majority
now. If I were an ultra-democrat or counter of noses
I should submit to you as having a transcendental — some-
times called divine — right ; if I were a redcap I should
buy dynamite and blow you up ; if I were a Tory I should
go to church or to bed ; as it is, I go to work to turn
your majority into a minority. I shall do it by reason-
ing and by attractive virtue.' ' Impostors.' A dangerous
luxury using these w^ords. We old people, Professors
or others, ought to take care not to tempt you young
people to use these words offhand. It is a word
habitually employed, not at all without cause, but
perhaps too hastily, against Christians. . . Bunsen may
have been an impostor — I don't know enough about
him ; I have very little doubt he was a pillster or
softhead. But in my education I got from him this
maxim, then, twenty-five years ago, valuable ; perhaps
obsolete now. ' Every theological rule must be ex-
pressed in terms of ethics, if it is to affect our lives in
this generation.' Not quoted verbatim ; probably to be
found in CIiMi^ch of the Future.

His correspondence with his sentimental king is said
by the w^ise French critic thereof to show v/isdom ; he
tried to teach the king to be sensible and straightforward
and patriotic as a citizen of the United States of Europe,

4IO LETTERS AND JOURNALS [D

EC.

and especially to stop Czar Nicholas in his career of
{/j8pts, which was forcing- that war of which Freeman is
ashamed (which, according- to the principles of Leopold
Von Ranke, was an inevitable, righteous, and useful war).
He lost his place for speaking thus. Had his advice been
taken, Prussia would have escaped the degradation under
which it lay from 1854 till the coming of Bismarck, out
of which it has struggled only by doing wrong to Austria
and Denmark. Bunsen was beloved by good English-
men, and has been praised and regretted by a wise
Frenchman, probably representing the French Whigs.
Had he lived in Boston, U. S., he would perhaps have
done better than Everett and other moderate Federalists
in averting or shortening strife. . .

Melbourne and Althorp. I have not looked to any
book, nor asked any one about your question. The
general rule about it is that Althorp was a plain squire,
who said, ' Thank Heaven, I can never be Prime Minister,
for I can't talk French.' Lord Halifax told me this, and
1 dare say it is in print. Melbourne was the only hard
and cool-headed man available ; he was not afraid. He
was felt to be far cleverer than John Russell, who as late
as 1842 was (esoterically) acknowledged by the Whigs
(CampbelP, son of Campbell, told me so then) to be not
strong enough to be their leader. Melbourne had done
work, Lansdovvne had not. (You may say, better a
pococurante than a dilettante for Minister.) Duncannon
was thought able. Query; were his connexions so strong.^
Lord Durham was the heir presumptive to Lord Grey,
and he was abhorred by Lord drey's son-in-law and
others; in fact, Mcn)Ourne was the man to snub him or
shelve him. l\'ilmerston was a recent convert from

' Lord Strathcdcn ami Campbell.

1875] BUNSEN. MELBOURNE. ALTUORP 411

Toryism, and had not tin- necessary character. Grant
(Glenelir) xvas the cleverest of the lot, but he was sleepy.
A party which had to keep Brougham at arm's len^rth
required a very unimafrinative or cool leader. A party
which had to conciliate O'Connell recjuired a somewhat
unscrupulous or Talleyrandic l^picurcan. . . Certainly
there was no notion of conciliating- Graham and Stanley
by means of Melbourne.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, Dec. 24, 1875.

As long as there are men to send me kindly their
books because I used to try to teach them, so long am
I quite content with this recluse life. My money will
hold out long enough to let me strike such a root here
that when angina pectoris comes I shall be missed
by six or seven parishes ; which is more than Cowper
was, I guess.

To Hon. F. L. Wood.

Halsdon, Dec. 28, 1875.

It is perhaps as well you don't read ; our modern
books show painfully that w^e have arrived, by evolution,
at a capacity for sentimental enjoyments which cannot
be satisfied except by the million and a half for whom
Grant Duff speaks in his wise book. You belong to that
select lot of Britons, and I live among those who, as he
says, are ' not very much better off than their forefathers
a hundred 3'ears ago.' It is seemingly easy, and it is the
fashion, to give away to the poor. I met a young wife
lately who piques herself on providing, not only neces-
saries, but games and toys for the children of her parish
(120 souls in all). Our excellent neighbour, Lady Ports-
mouth, at Eggesford, differs from most people in thinking

412 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

of the people above the poor, who have sensibihties not
to be appeased by hymns and floral decorations ; e. g. I
watched in her kindly house a young lady, daughter of
a manufacturer, who sat, just moving her foot to the
sound of unusually good piano-playing, and was taken
to see the pictures upstairs, and was called ' my dear '
quite simply, and made in one evening happy enough to
keep her sweet for half a year.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Jan. lo, 1876.

In the two Swinburne volumes, which you did well to
send as you would not bring them, the things I cared
for were parts of the Italy, the Benedicite of the towns
on Mazzini ; even if he was not quite a great man, anyhow
it was good they should think him one. Does not Swin-
burne care for Daniele Manin ? To me he is the great
man, the type of an Italian patriot : odd that he does not
appear in poetry or novel. Cairoli comes next in my
hagiolog}^^. Swinburne does not name him. I am more
republican than ever since reading all that last night.

The antiphons of Chthonia and Chorus ^ are fine ;
otherwise the play does not interest me. I prefer
Leonidas or Chevalier d'Assas, or the twenty men at
vSt. Sebastian who ran to get the mine blown, — false
attack, — of whom one escaped. I prefer these to the
volunteer victims of superstition. Kleazar the Maccabee
beats any Macaria or Codrus ; the Jews in the Asmonean
age utterly eclipse the passions of Greek patriots.
Brechtheus has in it no rests or monotones ; it is all
nbhligafOy sostenuto, exaltato^ &c. In a genuine Greek
play, Sophocles' Elecira or Antigone^ Euripides' Sup-

' In Swinburne's Erechtheus.

.870] SWINBURNE. ' ANTITHEISM' 413

pliccs^ the romantic parts are thrown into reh'cf; not
so in Erechtheus (horrid word to spell). . . But it is
impossible to reproduce or trump the sensation orlven
hy Atala)ita ; it was a wonderful triumph for vSwinburne
to write a poem which completely kindled and lifted
a middle-aged devotee of Tennyson. His chorus is alto-
gether too sugary, luxuriant, and unbridled in the stasima
or set pieces ; very effective in the antiphonal duets and
trios with the women. The unity of time (as in Oed.
Colon.) is strained ; it is hard upon us (on me) who stick
up for the unities. . . I wonder whether the excellent
Clifford^ approves of Praxithea's 'tribal self; certainly
it is carrying the Tribe to the n**', as they used to
say in Cambridge.

Clifford is beyond compare admirable, but yet I think
the Pall Mall \q.2A^v is right in commenting on his good
letter. It is because of the antitheism involved in
Darwanery, &c., and the danger of breaking up when
we lose the theological clamps, that we politicians shrink
from trenchant measures.

The old Napoleon has taught me once for all (in a
letter to Joseph) that a statesman must not (as Kimberley
would or as Dizzy does) pretend to be civil, and be
patronizing to priests, but must make it his duty to be
really friendly with them ; only of course he must never
allow them to interfere with the making or administering
of laws. Evolution may perhaps provide the State with
some new thing; possibly Jowett and Colenso may in
our time be shaping a new quasi-religion ; we preserve
the framework of establishment, and if so be, we let the
Essenes (healers) elbow out the Chasidim, and pious

^ W. K. Clifford, F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge ; Pro-
fessor of Applied Mathematics at University College, London.

414 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

Sadducees displace the Pharisee. I was taught by a
narrow Whig years ago that Colenso must be retained,
because who knows but the Church may altogether
Colense, as it Cranmered or Calvined.

Clifford would have to stop one s showing hagiological
pictures (as I yesterday showed Jessie, aged nine. Saint
Hubert kneeling to the crucifixed stag). He may do
much, I have done a little, towards bringing up young
people without kinks^ . . but as long as there is the
terror of darkness (night) he cannot altogether get rid of
childish delusions. He should read and notice Sir John
Herschel's account (in the Philosophy of Natural
Sciences^ Cab. Cycl.) of the inevitable /^Meaching of
young men, the purging from delusion ; Herschel takes
it from Plato ; he quotes or applies the poetry about
' euphrasy,' the mystic flower that clears the mind's eye.
I wish him well, that is, CHfford : he will infinitely help
teachers ; yet they will always have to unravel. . .

Lord Lytton's appointment gave me a twinge of joy.
That the world should be governed by poets is beyond
all dreams ; if only he has a good heart like Dufferin ;
if he has the courage, give-and-take, patience, elasticity,
of a parliamentary man ; if, like James Hudson, he has
kept in spite of diplomatic half-lights the massive direct
sense of a Briton ; if he is not, as I half fear from that
pretty letter in the Times from Paris, spoilt by the
irresponsible culture-criticism of the choice salon society,
spoilt for dealing with one-idea'd, fixed-idea'd, blue-
booked officials, honest puritans, passionate schemers,
meditative hermits of the 'cutcherry.' If he can tipply
to Calcutta merchants, as I do to Devonshire squires and
farmers, the principles of poetical charity (what Words-
worth gave us), then his high imagination will set him

i876l LORD LYTTON. IIELOJSE. GOETHE 415

;is an caolc above the Russians, and above even so very
good and wise a man as Lord Northbrook. I should
like to live to hear of his splendid superiority. It is two
and twenty years since I was asked by a lady interested
in him to read his manuscript poems and to say whether
I thought he would in spite of his father be a literary
conqueror. Then, long after, I read the songs in Tann-
hausci^, the book in which Julian Fane served him as a
foil ; since then I have seen only a few extracts from his
Fables, enough to know that he is ' in the succession.'

I am getting to admire Dizzy.

I am lost in Heloise, Remusat's Life of Abelard\ a
beautiful book, it makes France more interesting than
ever. Talk of Laura and Beatrice ; they were but dolls.
Heloise was woman of women ; above the inventions of
George Eliot and Victor Hugo ; and think of her living
700 years ago, when our Britons were up to nothing.

Whatever Lord Derby may persist in saying, we, the
fiery tax-payers, who fought Nicholas and don't repent
it, do wish for a protectorate of Egypt and something-
more. . .

I delight in Dizzy saying * England is a great Mediter-
ranean Power.' He almost says, with me, we will fortify
Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, to link with Gibraltar,
Malta, Perim, and Aden. ' The leopard sitting on his
chalk cliff perceives that his claw^s have grown,' says
the applauding admiring Frenchman. . .

I have been reading Lewes' rational biography of
Goethe, who is made out to be not such a Tito as he
represents himself in his autobiography ; he was won-
derful in early manhood for keeping clear of the ebrieties
or distemperatures of the generation which was throwing
off the yoke of French taste. . .

4i6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Halsdon, Dolton, Feb. lo, 1876.

I suppose the imagination must always be employed
to estimate the effect of books on character. By its help
I connect the gentlemanly behaviour of our squires in
the Civil War with the translation of Tasso by Squire
Fairfax, and I gather from Cowley's account of ' myself
what were the literary influences of the day.

I imagine the interpretation given by Henry Wotton
to woman-worship, in his poem to Elizabeth of Bohemia,
telling on Eton lads such as Robert Boyle.

I apprehend the Diary of Evelyn shows direcdy how
far his character was formed by books. I conceive Sun-
derland (husband of Saccharissa), Lovelace, and Wogan
were all warmed by Philip Sydney. I imagine the charm
and spell of Vandyke's portraits being both effect of
Spenser- Sidney -Raleigh literature, and cause of Cavalier
and Roundhead nobleness.

What apostolical succession is more interesting than
the tradition of thouofht and sentiment ? . .

In the three wars we had with France between George I
and the Revolution our men were more romantic or
' chivalrous ' than their forefathers of the Cressy-Agincourt
days, and the behaviour of Frenchmen towards Britons,
and vice versa, was more courteous and generous ; I trace
this to literature, not to religion. Lord Chatham [aptid
(ireen) comes out as a sort of Joshua. Was he not
moved by books ? Rachel Russell was, I suppose, a
sort of she-apostle to the governing families. Lucy
Hutchinson and Margaret Newcastle helped towards
lady -worship. In Fanny Burncy's life you have a fruit
of this growth.

I,

1876] LITERATURE AND CHARACTER 417

Every character described 1)\ literature becomes the
germ of characters and fragments of characters.

I maintain that apart from such considerations as these
the study of belles lettres is rather frivolous, and the
examination of cadets in the Vicar of Wakefield or in
the Clock's Tale is a legitimate object of the sneer
bestowed thereon in Daniel Deronda.

However, I am on the whole inclined to urge you to
stick fast to your own business, the correction of things
written by boys, the critical mind-gardening, in which
there is more w^eeding and pruning than grafting. We
are not all . . . Gambettas or Kingsleys, i. e. quasi -prophets
or half- ranters ; seldom does one man combine the two
arts of preaching and of criticizing.

My last excitement is Charles de Remusat's Life of
Abelard, his great work : it is perfectly new to me, and
ver}' delightful to learn from him that Heloise is not
a ressusciiee^ galvanized by revivalists, but a woman
infinitely womanly, dear to her own generation, done
into vernacular poetry within a hundred years after her
conversion, part of the soul of France for 700 years, to
this day the type of the faithful self-sacrificing woman-
hood which in our splendid French novels we adore.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Feb. 20, 1876.

What can be done in many countries is to displace an
official class, a privileged class. In doing this we leave
the tribes alone, we leave undisturbed the great mass
of the people ; the one nation (Italians of Lombardy, for
instance) or the many intertwined nations, as in India.

At present the Sultan won't or can't appoint infidels
or Franks as Pashas or judges or tax-gatherers ; what
I E e

4i8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

the six Powers have to do is to get this done quiedy,
without degrading him in the eyes of his people ; it
should be done by the joint pressure of the six (reckon-
ing America, seven) Embassies, and it should not be
formulated in a public document. That is to say, if we
all agree to reform Turkey without a cataclysm, which
I think we are bound to try, even if we are not very
hopeful about it. . .

We want Shanghais in Turkey ; that is a plain bit of
business ; nothing doctrinaire in that.

To Hon. R. B. Brett,

Halsdon, March ii, 1876.

What C. says about International Law delights me. . .
Piling Ortolan on Story, on Wheaton, on Vattel, &c.,
&c., is just as useless as the old (Christopher Wordsworth)
way of quoting the Fathers. Mere reiteration of a
dictum, apart from practical decisions, does not make
doctrine. Lord Stowell's judgements have authority,
mainly because they have been (so far as they have
been) accepted and used in action by the Admiralty
judges of other nations. It is dogmatic bounce, and
no better than infalliblist oracularity or inspirational
buncombe, to quote Holroyd as Coleridge does. . .

The first statesman in the Lords is Tait. The second
is Cairns. They would both do better for a Prime
Minister than Dizzy. SaHsbury never goes wrong;
arbitrary, &c., but what should we do in time of need
without aristocrats of that fibre ? He is (who else is ?)
laborious, fearless, prompt and haughty. He has, though
nearly spoilt by flattery, ceased to give needless offence
or to indulge antipathies. I look on him as a foeman

II

1876] ARCHBISHOP TAIT. LAW REFORM 419

worthy of our steel in peace. Should we fall out with
Russia, Spain, Brazil, which is likely enough, he would
be as fit for fight as Castlcreagh. He is something-
different from a clerk raised to the n^^'. . .

Read Villemain's Souvenirs. His account of the Cent
Jours, written in 1855 ; the first chapter is a masterpiece ;
it has all the merit of history and French novel com-
bined. His calm praise of England is nectar to me. . .

Dizzy's brain is softening, and the 'old man' — his
spite — is showing as the veneer cracks off. I thank him
for helping to make Monarchy vulgar. If they want to
please the Colonies why not cross the proclamations
* & Co.' . .

I should like to see all the working judges (excluding
the swells perhaps) meet to ballot for the election of two
/of their number to be set free for two years from all
judicial work to codify and prepare laws. I object to an
odd number. The two best men should agree on every
w^ord. At the end of the two years, on a fresh ballot,
let one be re-eligible.

They would do much better than a minister of legis-
lation. They would relish the innings as a change.
They would, as representatives, have incomparable
authority with Parliament. It w^ould be a ' fusion ' of
Benthamic legislation with Eldonine evolution. Neither
a Cockburn nor a Fitzjames could sneer at Blackburn
and Hall appointed by ballot. . .

The point to dwell on is that a scheme coming from
the judges would not be at the mercy of the Parliament
lawyers. Of course the judges w^ould not initiate any-
thing organic, like the abolition of jury in Ireland, or of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in England : they would simply
take homicide, married women's property, insurance,

E e 2

420 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

or the like, in such a way as to effect an adjustment,
not pretending to be for all ages. . .

She [George Eliot] is a very noble, wise, sublime
writer; but her human beings don't live with me for
life. Perhaps Caleb Garth does : his image blends
sometimes with the memory of my own father. She
has not yet created man or woman for me to love. Not
quite. She is not such a real woman as Mrs. Gaskell
or Charlotte. I prefer the ' poor young man's ' Mar-
guerite, and Miss Rovel, to all the Hettys, Rosamonds,
Tessas, and Esthers. I read the first part of Daniel
Dero7ida with high intellectual satisfaction, but without
the least excitement. Each number of a book like this
comes to me like a Plato sermon or a Virgil tract. It
does not go into my blood. They are, mostly, superb
moralities, not mysteries. Mill on the Floss is the only
one of them that transcends. I am quite sure it is the
one that Charlotte Bronte would relish most, but I can't
go back to it as I do to the beatific Shirley.

Nicholas, my colt, comes home next Monday. Great
excitement. Something like a launch^ when he goes
into harness.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, March 12, 1876.

When the world (India, Canada, &c.) is governed by
poets— when musicians are as sensible as surgeons (a few
more such dreams subauditinticr)^ then will a philosopher
fold his hands and relax his frown complacently. It is
even conceivable that we may get a Norway and a
Switzerland in which Wordsworth's Maidens of Brienz,
who sing and love in the harvest-boat, will be as common
as tuft-hunters are now.

1876] GEORGE ELIOT. NEWMAN 421

7^0 Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, March 13, 1876.

I read yesterday the most lovely thing, not new to me,
perhaps unknown to you and some of your friends,
J. H. Newman's early autobiography. His goodness is
lustrous, his unconsciousness of incapacity for pursuing
truth is transparent In one place he says, ' my reason
ordered me to do (think) so.' Yet I suppose he cannot
see that a Darwin or a Giordano Bruno with similar
meekness obeys his ' reason.' And this is the supreme
sadness : I hope the other planets escape it.

To Hon. R. B. Breti.

Halsdon, March 25, 1876.

I feel half tempted to come and live in London. I half
fancy I can be useful as a sort of interpreter between
the science people and the spiritual people. The cheer-
fulness of the London people, their enjoyment of affec-
tions, music, and news is very attractive. . .

Faire son droit — to study law. Faire son salut — to
study salvation. Cognate phrases, both indicating pro-
cesses and methods : not quite what one cares about
as humanity.

To Lady Pollock^.

Sutton, Woodbridge,

April II, 1876.

It will cost us a pang to give up the known good, the
perfectly harmonious pathetic Jefferson^, and to fly to
the doubtful Irving and the realms of Pharisaic exaltation

^ On the occasion of Tennyson's Queen Mary being brought out at the
Lyceum,

^ In Rip van Winkle.

422 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

and ferocious party spirit ; but H. Sturgis will be proud
of the Batemans, and I shall have just a chance in that
little theatre of seeing the author in his box ; I missed
him when he came to Cambridge in 1844. I was dining
with Shilleto when Maine came to King's College to
fetch me to the room in which Alfred Tennyson, then
young and ideal, was with a party of C. C. S. ^ men.
That night he walked about the streets with Maine,
and the talk was the stuff of his poet^y^ I never had
a sample of it, though, to listen to. Now the man is no
longer heroic — too rich, too self- pleasing ; but he has
been, off and on, the luminary, and perhaps his forehead
may look ideal from the shrine under the gas, and
perhaps it is fair that one old faithful admirer should
be there to go along with all the fine thoughts ; he may
be changed, but I am not, as far as concerns the pride
I take in my mother-tongue ever since he glorified it.
Am I not the same moper that heard in August 1842
Hallam the historian read aloud, mouthily, the ' Recol-
lections of the Arabian Nights ' ? Am I not he that in
1862 was scoffed at as a rara avtSy a Northerner and
a Tennysonian ?

To Capt. A. H. Drummond.

Halsdon, May i, 1876.

I went for a fortnight at Toaster to old Vidals most
enjoyable vicarage and parish ; a land of sand, poplars^
sallow, holly hedge, rabbit holes, red cart horses, soft
sociable cottagers, abounding in scenes that would make
pictures for artists, not for the blue and green devouring
public. I am no artist, but I beHevc there are times
when I see things as joyfully as they do; and Wood-

' The * Apostles.'

1876] TENNYSON. NORFOLK 423

brido-e Ferry, and the unfinished rrroynes for warping
or reclainiinii;- land, and a certain sandstone cjuarry whicli
we call from J/i'// on the Floss ' the Red Deeps,' are
all in a high degree good for a draughtsman — not far
from Constable s country.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

May 7, 1876.

* Dead literature ' — as if Middle Age books were not
quite as dead as Pindar, infinitely more dead than Ovid,
Martial, Cicero, who are absolutely ours^ might at any
moment correspond with us, and stay in our houses, and
make fun of the ' Empress.'

... I have long held fast to aK^crrai tol <pp€V€9 kaOK^v^
which is a pearl of thought.

To H, E. Ltixtnoore.

Hoar Cross, July 31, 1876.

I think of J. with more interest than of most people,
though very far from him, far as Dives from Lazarus :
grief is a very taking, engaging thing when it is in a full-
grown man of good heart, and it is the best set-ofF
against the oppressive showiness of success. I have just
been through the five volumes of the Life of Palmer ston :
the Muse of Sorrow does not breathe therein.

In a walk I came upon a very deeply-cut stone with
a Maltese cross and three capitals, H. C. D., to note
a boundar)^ of the new district carved out of parishes for
their memorial church : Scott Holland is coming with
clerical pupils next week, to serve the church and enjoy
the shade of the many bits of Needwood Forest close to
the house which serves as parsonage : one of these is
a park of one hundred acres, as old as any deer-park in

424 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

the island : another is Brakenhurst, belonging to the
Duchess of Lancaster, who cuts down the trees as soon
as they are marketable, but leaves the gates open for
me to roam even with a dog: further off, but within
a walk, is the thousand -acre park that holds the best of
British oaks, red deer, and wild goats, black and white ;
and beyond this Bagot s park is Chartley, to which
I hope to ride to-day, where there are wild catde ; the
house of the Earl Ferrers who was hanged ; all these
parks . . . make a ' sumptuous ' landscape (as you used to
say twelve years ago) ; and I got a new sensation in them
one day when the lightning forbade us (in an open
carriage) to hoist umbrellas, and a young mother whom
I knew as a child took off her hat from pure frugality,
and let the storm ruffle her hair, whilst her innocent
good face, with eyes worse for use than mine, confronted
the lightning with no sign of fear. A tree was burnt.

The woods hold big orchids and tall willow herb and
tall bracken, and not so many brambles as I am used to ;
no one ' plashes ' the hedges on the roadside — calves are
allowed to graze on the wasteful comfortable road-edge,
and as I walk I stoop to pick up little pebbles that are
dangerous for horses, left bare by the rain washing the
gravel away ; the farming is absurdly bad, and the
people very easy to get on with ; in short it is the most
middle-age, slipshod, easy-going country that I have
been in. One night we sang ; there was a young lady
next to me, and we joined in singing the rebel song
*• Maryland,' and I found she was bosom cousin of B. C,
the sweetest singer in Devonshire : these be traces of
romance which I note for your sake, as you moan all
your life for the triumphs of law and economy. I enjoy
it all alike ; but girlhood beats all else, and it is to be

1876] NEEDWOOD FOREST. TURKEY 425

noted that the ornicc thereof does not perish in London
seasons. I have seen here a Louisa of twenty -six, fresh
from London, and spring-y as Emily of Torrington,
aged seventeen.

To Capt. A. H. Druinmoitd.

Hoar Cross, July 31, 1876.

I propose to go to Madame Tussaud for a wax Sultan,
to send it to mosque every Friday, and rule in its name ;
the Consul to live in Stamboul ; the provinces to be held
by a constabulary like the Irish, made of young men of
all creeds united by esprit de corps^ directed by tax-
gathering magistrates such as our men in India, these
also to be of any nation or creed ; Pera to be like
Shanghai, governed by a commercial municipality ;
Embassies and Consulates to shrink into less importance.

To F. Warre Cornish.

Oct. 31, 1876.

Hold the Provinces in trust, as we held the Seven
Islands. Wait to see w^hat State, whether Servia,
Roumania, or Greece, or Croatia (severed from Hun-
gary), or Transylvania (German) is most attractive, most
worthy of accretion.

'Autonomy ' is a phrase for idle men. When you come
to analyze it you see that it may mean Legislatures like
those of Virginia or Massachusetts, or Conseils Generaux,
or mere Quarter Sessions.

But isonomy, with its graduated Courts, its forms, its
bar, will school the unknown incalculable latent i77ge7iia
of Moesia and Macedonia. We have lost fifty, sixty
years : as soon as Napoleon was down it was no one's
business to train Sicilians, Greeks, Suliotes : but had

426 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

there been a patriot king or a philosopher statesman
we might have set our Wilham Bentinck, Church, Raffles,
Hastings, &c. to teach all those Southern (Eastern)
Europeans the great business.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

August 12, 1876.

Disraeli's great merit is judgement about men's abilities,
claims, and propensities. No Prime Minister that I have
read about has been like him in this knowledge of
character and skill in dealing with various capabilities.
He is like a very good cricket captain who can not only
choose his eleven, place his field and settle the order of
innings, but can keep them backing up each other and
not running each other out. His ministry this time
must be, I think, the result of the most admirable skill
in compounding and arranging. On the whole they
behave better than any set of Ministers ever known.
Their characters improve.

He is to be praised for snubbing and keeping at arm s
length a great many obtrusive men. . .

Gladstone has a generous indiscriminate sympathy
with clever men, but he does not know how to play the
game of bringing people out. Thirty years ago he
alienated Northcote by neglect. Whom has he enlisted ?

Disraeli never would have made such a mistake as
people made about Lord Ripon, Lord Belper, Sir F. Head,
nor offered Palmerston the Government of Jamaica.
Again, he has singular felicity in giving fair places, full
range to ' earnest ' men, orthodox men, &c., being himself
a Gallio. Other Gallionic Ministers have repelled or
eschewed belief or enthusiasm.

1876] DISRAELI AND GLADSTONE 427

7>>> I^. Wan^e Cornish.

Halsdon, 1875.

I have a most delightful friend now. He is called
Crusoe. He is a g"oat — very fond of me — most patient.
Cows, I am told, have no affections ; but I currycomb
Deborah, a white heifer, aged two, with a reddish head,
and I rub the cheeks of Huldah, Deborah's half-sister,
aged four months, wholly red, but smooth and sleek.

I have four lambs, born in March, quite untameable.

I have a friend among the percher birds. He comes
to breakfast ; but he won't let me come near enough to
see whether he is a robin or a chaffinch.

I miss the stable-boy, Jan, who used to show me the
nests. . .

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, Nov. 28. 1876.

Goats. Crusoe was shot yesterday by the bold G.^ for
being offensive and dangerous ; my great niece Isabel is
coming in two days — very fond of animals — she would
have been in trouble with him ; I dig his grave in Tophet
between two silver firs, near the shrubs that I cherish.
I fed him tenderly the day before he died : I regret him.

Emily, aged four months, pure white, would please H.
Lucy, her mother, is happy and good. I want to sell
Jetty and Bratti, to keep Stephen and Sanjo — they
have a house of their own which used to be a chicken -
house : it is now closed on the South, and used for
growing roses on, fenced ; but it is open to the North,
for the donkeys and fowls to run in.

Donkeys. Grizzle is useful; Job is amusing — he is
shod (not shot).

^ Griffiths, the bailiff.

428 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov. 1876

Colts. Nicholas goes away soon for £^0 — he is good,
pretty, playful. Gordon will be broken in this next
spring, when he will be near three ; he will succeed in
due time to Caspar — very good soul. Cameron, aged
seven months, is spotless, handsome ; he lives in the
eastern half of the court, and I go to see him — he is
beloved and admired.

Cows. Miggles has been sold for ;^i3 — good bargain,
as Duchess and Huldah were sold in the summer. I have
but three left — Deborah aged four, Dowzabelle aged two
and half, Bertha aged seven months — this last is red —
she is called after a Roman Catholic lady of great musical
charms.

Pigs. Mrs. Masham, Lady Rolle, are happy and free
to wander; we give them cabbage -leaves for a treat. ^
Lord Eldon is shut up to get fat, and is expected to |
fetch about £6 on Christmas Day. C, spotty and ugly,
is obliged to live by himself for fear the ladies eat
his food — he is close to the dogs. Dyke and Pansy —
they are beautiful, affectionate, and useless, except so far
as they keep the bold G.'s mind and heart sweet. Tip
is perfectly good and useful and modest.

Gallinas. Darby and Joan come to be fed — some-
times in front of the house : my French pupil Constance,
aged eleven, looks at them as she sits doing her lessons ;
but she prefers a squirrel who comes to eat nuts thrown
to him ; he is of course free like the robin, but he does
not cisk for food as the robin does. They eat Abcrnethy
biscuit.

Pigeo7is don't increase — something wrong. But I
eat wood-pigeons which the bokl G. shoots ; truly they
arc good.

Sheep. Seven ewes — ten hogs or lambs of nine

! Jan. 1877] ANIMALS AT HALSDON. FARMERS ^'?g

months, doinsr very well. Here I j^et back a little of
tlie money wasted on other animals, such as Mrs. G.,
but sheep are not interesting — one does not know them
by sight.

7^0 H. E. Ltixmoore.

London, Jan. 25, 1877.

I wanted to go to Greece, not to see Schliemann's
treasures, but to see the live Greeks. No companion
turns up, and all moneys are wanted for nephews, so
I must rub through the spring at home. Sciatica, perhaps,
will have to be fought with. This winter, if it is winter,
I have had no illness.

That same day we had at Beaford a big tea-party
of no fathers and mothers of poor children, with as
many more listeners for a little lay sermon on the new
education law delivered by Charles Acland, who is a
good man and moderately ambitious. Our poor folks,
grave and lean, seemed to listen with great earnestness.
As they never go to church, and not many of them to
chapel, and have no squire or lady to patronize them,
it was perhaps worth while for them to be brought
together. The pretty part of the business was that a lot
of farmers, w^ith their wives and with guests of their own
rank from distant parishes, came to support us and were
very hearty. Some of them were Cyclopian men\ unused
to social action, with grudges and heartburns : they were
for one evening gregarious, peaceful, and in fellowship,
and yet there was no clergyman employed. A great
number of the people could not read, but all seem glad
that their children are made to learn to read. This
winter I have been of a little more use and weight than

^ Homer, Odyss, 112-115.

43© LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

before, and it irks me to think I may be driven by want
of health and money to live once more as a lodg-er in
a town with no roots in the soil. But I am struggling
to keep my place a little longer. . .

Nothing is so affecting as the life of Lord Althorp —
a true story, left, perhaps, by no design ; a tale half told,
to stir one's questioning. It is quasi -scriptural — the
man's conversion, through love of wife and mourning,
from pleasure to duty ; then his retiring to the country,
and his getting ready for death. There is a certain
mysteriousness about it. Pray read the book, if you
have not already.

To Lady Pollock.

Halsdon, May 4, 1877.

Monday, at Bideford Bridge Hall, eight ladies met me.
Nine are to come when roses blow. They will be taught
not only Latin, but the difference between the language
of reason and the language of poetry, and the great
art, unknown to half- educated people, of avoiding the
vScottish, American, clerical, rhetorical, nondescript com-
promises between the two. . .

My dog Duke was very happy with us to-day. I often
wonder whether he has any perception of the difference
between a day and a month.

I am for a dozen ladies the prophet of Lyell, Darwin,
Faraday, Ricardo. Raison oblige is the war cry, but in
my heart I say Vive la Jeimesse^ and so I go to see
Emily, aged five, who likes me.

To Rev. C. IV. Furse.

Hai.sih>n, May 10, 1877.

I get to know a lot of people by giving the in lifts on
Saturday in and out of Torrington. 1 have (at last)

1877] LATIN LESSONS AT BIDEFORD 431

learnt . . . how to make acc|uaintancc with poor folk, and
a ^ood deal of Wordsworth comes true : only the daisies
are not (juitc so edifyino^ to me as they were to him.

7\) Hon. R. B. Brett.

May 28, 1877,

Yesterday a child from Beaford, who was in the book-
room taking shelter from rain with two others, looking
at pictures, heard L. G. chanting over the piano,
and was entranced with wonder. The piano was too
execrable, but to this good httle soul was a world of
power and sweetness. She wished they could have one
in Beaford, and almost groaned to hear how much it
cost.

It takes but very little to give a girl like this a pure
burst of joy, and yet they have, poor souls, a capacity
for high enjoyment, which poverty wholly prevents our
satisfying. I conceive this is a ' feature ' of modern
English country life, hardly noticed by George Eliot
and other sages. The susceptibilities have somehow
endosmosed from the educated ladies to the grand-
children of ladies' maids, brought up in desperate
poverty, but not without ' genial rage.' The only thing
we can give them which ' levels upwards ' is a flower.
The music w^e cannot even get ourselves. Long ago
I used to wish, a la Henri IV^ that every cottage should
hold a piano.

I asked these three little girls for their songs ; they
at once said songs were impossible, being Sunday, but
gave me hymns, sung in tune, but not very fine melodies.
Likewise they recited their ' pieces ' learnt by heart for
their chapel anniversary feast, and I ascertained that
they were quite in twilight as to the meaning thereof.
Teachers too busy to explain till after Anniversary.

432 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

To Lady Pollock.

Hoar Cross, Burton- on-Trent,

July 26, 1877.

I am reading KIngsley's life. . . In his letters I find
good, wholesome, brilliant stuff now and then . . . but
this and similar biographies I read chiefly for history
purposes. The poetry is to be had in a book you
never heard of, Lettres de Made-fnoiselle cTEspinasse,
described and glorified by the wise and good Mackintosh
in the Journal which he wrote for his wife. This French
lady died, neither young nor fair, lamented by d'Alembert
and Turgot a hundred years ago. I put some of her
gems of delicate ardour into plain Latin for the ladies,
and if I ever get back to the Marguerites of fiction
I shall have a standard of real life to test them by. At
present she beats nearly all of them in that intensity
which does not bore me by being spasmodic, that * repe-
tition ' which is not ' vain.'

To Lady Pollock.

Hotel Windsor, Paris, 1877.

I have no one to talk to in all this city but a sweet
girl-waitress at the place where I dine. I walk a good
mile to it every day. She takes care of me, explaining
the carte. If you ever go to Paris, mind you dine at
Duval's F.tablissement, Boulevard St. Michel, 360 paces
from the Fountain, right-hand side going up hill, i. e.
west side. You dine well for 2\ francs, tout conipris^
if you take care ; but you must go up the stairs and
take places close to them at 6 p.m., not later, if you
arc to be served by my T^nld. She, like all the Duval
demoiselles^ is in pure black with white cap, apron, and

i877] tfABLISSEMENT DUI/AL 433

Jichic, and an odd little white muslin amulet han^in^
from the neck, and a pencil swinirin^ at the waist. It is
edifyinor to sec how they uncork our demi- Bordeaux
and demi -Macon. We have no table cloths, but they
wipe our white slabs for us satisfactorily, and our ser-
viettes are ^reat and sweet. This was a good day for
Ajldncuy. The poor folks were out everywhere, enjoying
the warmth. It is fun to see how the functionaries smile
on brats who lose their balls and trespass for them on
the forbidden flower beds. I am a sworn Frenchman
now. It is a comfort to be in a city in which there is not
the least risk either of hearing German sounds or seeing
monarchical emblems. I have v/andered everywhere
these ten days and seen no one drunk, rude, slangy,
irritable, obtrusive, clumsy, or censorious. . .

I watch the road-making, the gardening, the steerage
of steamboats, the balancing of the huge two-wheeled
carts, the faithfulness of the grand horses which are
better than yours in London. Very few of the girls have
' rippling ringlets. ' They call them ' Anglaises ' when they
buy them, i. e. the grown-up ladies. Most of the women
are in black ; the men wear no ' loud ' scarves or ties.

The one drawback in this brilliant gentle town is the
want of music ; but to-day I fell upon a regiment
marching w^ith its band : sursum cor da. I think I shall
go to Gounod's new thing Bravo^ but it is sad to go
alone to a play.

To Lady Pollock.

! Halsdon, Oct. 16, 1877.

At St. Malo, which I saw for the third time in glory
of low sunlight, I spent ten minutes happily in a jolly
crowd — two admirable middle-class English girls in frocks

F f

434 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Nov.

with a donkey-cart such a struggle to get their luggage
into it. I went at that cart like Don Quixote.

Then there was a Bacchanal swarm of reservistes in
blouses, just set free from drill, and going home, just like
Eton boys after a Lord's match, only much jollier.

Next day seventeen hours of Paradise weather and
scenery from Rennes to Trouville. Fell in love with the
bonnets of Marie and Anastasie, girls in frocks going on
a day's pleasuring with wholesome peasant parents. . .

Since I came home I have had a convulsion of pity,
reading Loukeria, Les Reliques vivantes^ a little paper
in Turgeneff 's miscellanies.

He is an excellent writer. He has new characters ; there
are two women in one book, Machourina and Marianne,
never to be forgotten. But what need of them ? Caroline

Helston is alive, or was alive w^hen wrote the

supplementary book about Charlotte. Please to ask
Mrs. Deffell to inquire for Miss Ellen Nussey. She
must be sixty. Also for Miss Ogle, authoress and ' sub-
ject' (metaphysically) of the novelette A Lost Love'^,
said to be living in London. A good woman who knew
her told me so.

To think that I have lived these twenty-six years in
the same island as the real Caroline Helston.

To Hon. R. B. Breii.

Halsdon, Nov. 13, 1877.

I sent to the Cambridge University Press this week
sundry rhymes^, enough to fill forty-eight pages exactly ;
not published, but just to 'give' away for a shilling;
a copy privately, as I was tired of coj^ying out, and^
at the same time I never could tell that there might not

' By Ashford Owen. ' lonica, ii.

i877] BRITTANY. TURGENEFF. TORRINGTON 435

be a few, Sixy ten pupils, who mi^ht like to see certain
thincrs. Of course there is a percentage left out, for fear
of discord ; and of what is sent to press, there is, perhaps,
not half that can be interestinjr to strangers. . .

I made a speech at the Torrington Mayor's dinner,
without half a minute's notice ; kept the sixty guests in
a wholesome laugh for five minutes, which is as good
as almsgiving. Nobody makes me laugh ; that is the
worst of absence from clever men.

To Lady Pollock. ,

Halsdon, Dec. 16, 1877.

What is the sense of talking in church about the
eternal life, and then throwing over a woman who
exhausts the Beatitudes, just because she cannot teach
French or piano drill ?

The inconsistencies of religious mothers are enough
to make Auld Clootie grin. . .

Love of France is my ruling passion now, or rather
sentiment, for I have no passions, not even fear.
England's love for French liberty is the most beautiful
of historic phenomena. Callicratidas would bless us if
he knew of it, and Timoleon would take long strides.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Halsdon, Dec. 31, 1877.

It is odd that when persons preach about heaven they
do not dwell upon the apparently infinite capacity of the
human heart for forming, like a tree, ring upon ring of
affection and admiration.

Please to set forth to your brother that if he deigns
to come here he will find the ' change pleasant to the

F f 2

436 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan. 1878

rich, and the poor man's suppers without curtains (but
in fact we have curtains), which smooth the troubled
brow ^' In other words, we dine at 2.0, and have a tea
with potted meat at 6.30, and no soda, no brandy, no
wine save Marsala, not even thick cream, as milk is
scarce ; but we have health and no stuffiness, stodginess,
or formulae. We don't talk about the weather much.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Halsdon, Jan. 15, 1878.

How persevering you are, how inconvertible. I regard
the study of Bach as most laudable, just like the transit
of Venus, or the bottled infusoria, or the Challenger
dredge ; but I am personally content to cry at Madame
A ngot, and even at the Grande Dttchesse, still more at
' Lochaber ' played by the Scots Guards. What is Bach
to me ? Just what he would have been to Burns. Vide
Burns,

To 7^ War re Cornish.

FuNCHAL, Madeira, March 26, 1878.

I have within the last week told Stone, in answer to
an extremely kind letter, and I may as well now tell
you, though he has perhaps done so, that I have a
reasonable expectation of being married. It is a thing
I cannot quite justify ; only I have a friend who approves
of it heartily, and he is a wise and good man, though
too kind in his judgement of mc. . .

'A new start '—^possibly. Since I have been here
I have been picking the brains of many men with special
knowledge ; and no Ulysses, except perhaps Ferdinand
de Lesscps, wrus ever more ready for enterprise on the
verge of old age ; only the short sight thwarts me.

* Horace, Odes, iii. 29, 16.

Feb. 1879] MARRIAGE. GOLDWIN SMITH 437

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Madkika,
Eve of St. Mark, 1878.

Two years ag"0 I was 'put off' by Huxley, whom
I heard one evening talking- to Clifford and Pollock, and
I then told Pollock it was evil, Huxley's way of speaking.
Pollock explained it by saying Huxley had been very
hardly treated in former years — was in fact avenging
himself

I dislike the railing, still more the aping of religious
language, such as the imitations which Mallock con-
demns. I find Goldwin Smith quite authoritative as
a theist ; it is so to me because he is my old mate. After
these many years he seems to come to me with his open
hand stretched out. Once in all this long time I have
written to him : it was when he came back from the
United States after lecturing on the civil war. I wrote
to ask him to reprint the lecture here ; he did. I reviewed
it in the Daily News, and had the comfort of putting
down his name amongst the names of high saints in
politics, such as Turgot, Rossi, Romilly, Manin.

I think now of these people, Goldwin Smith and my
other high-minded mate Henry Coleridge, and a few
others, as Dives perhaps thought of Lazarus, or Napoleon
at St. Helena thought of Soult and Macdonald.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Madeira, Feb. 14, 1879.

Look here, this is very serious. . . People in the
papers are writing about the County Franchise Reform
as ' enfranchising the ploughman.' It is not so ; it is

438 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

enfranchising the small shop-keepers and genteel villa
people under ^^50 rent, of places like Slough, Maiden-
head, Torrington. It is to take away the hardship of
accidental disfranchisement produced by living just
outside a borough. This is to give heaps of new voters,
other than ploughmen, to the counties. . .

A real reform bill, worthy of a Trevelyan, a Dllke,
a Chamberlain, would abolish the non-resident county
voters, the men who even now, though the elections
come quick, can hop from shire to shire, voting three
or four times. Proper old-fashioned rational represen-
tation, with all honesty, with all sportsmanlike excitement
in it, is the representation of neighbourhoods or circum-
scriptions. . .

I incline to the abolition of counties, except as poetical
expressions like the old French provinces.

I am persuaded that the proper thing to do is to
propose that all elections be simultaneous, as in France. . .
It is, perhaps, too early to propose to abolish property
non-residential votes, but simultaneous election could
be carried without any long struggle. i

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

March a, 1879.

Italy would join in due time. Austria has apparendy
to try her wisdom in keeping her eciuillbrlum. Observe
that it is a poor programme, that mere backing out of
the Salisbury foreign policy. It will exclude Whigs
from office, as some newspaj^ers observe.

The young men of the nation arc to be considered.
For their sakes vou must devise somcthlnir effective —
trump the Salisbury card. Instead of saying pooh-pooh
to the protectorate of Asia Minor, turn it into a sort of

1879] COUNTY FRANCHISE. TURKEY 439

Dewannee finance government. If France and Egypt
can regulate Egyptian finances, so they can regulate
St'imhoul finances.

yVll the young men of civilized nations will be with
them if they persevere till 1900 A. D., in getting fair play
for the Svrians and the Greeks.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Camacha, Madeira.

I know what I should do if I were the Palmerston of
the hour. I would withdraw my embassy from Stam-
boul, and seize Smyrna and Mitylene, and give the
Greeks a good deal of help, and then I would say to
the Germans and Austrians, You are welcome to Salonica,
but you will not get our Indian mails that way unless
you behave nicely ; and I have no objection to you three
Eastern Powers occupying Constantinople with a fede-
rated composite force . . . provided you form a Frank
municipality at Pera, and put the Sultan into a position
similar to the Pope's, and hold the city or cities in trust
for the Greek state, or, if Fortune wills it, for the Bul-
garian state that shall be hereafter.

I say the Sultan wants a coup dc grace., and we need
not be afraid of an European war. . . The word ' par-
tition ' is dyslogistic or invidious. . . We know two or
three ways of dealing with a loose country : — (i) Holding
places in trust, as Ionian Islands ; (2) Making a mixed
municipality, as at Shanghai ; (3) Governing by a syndi-
cate of many nations, as in Egypt. . .

Gladstone is at once inventive and pertinacious. It is
not too late for him to Bismarck the Levant.

440 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

To C. Kegan Paul^.

Madeira. March 4, 1879.

I have a guest here who is going home next month,
and can be trusted with my Sibylline leaves.

I think of sending to you by this messenger, who will
have to send the parcel from Manchester, about enough
copy for a small ^s. volume, giving from 1815 to 1832,
revised again and again, not very legible.

I have cancelled a orood deal that was done when
twisted and maimed. I have nearly cast out the evil
spirit of Gibbonesque evasiveness ; but I distrust myself,
even after taking great pains when in health and com-
posure, and I have no one here to guide me by whole-
wsome criticism. I wish to submit the attempt to the
voung people who lightly earn their guineas by scari-
fying poor bookmakers. I have no excuse for troubling
a publisher, except that, like other married men, I am
capable de tout: I should like to earn a dress or two
for the young lady. . .

I think my booklet may be more serviceable to a
Foreign Office man. It is free from Hansard leastways.
I can put it ofif till I have done with Lord Grey, but
I can hardly get so far as 1835 in time for the London
season.

To Lady Pollock.

Madeira, March 4, 1879.

Your letters came out with the young Bonaparte, who
landed, 1 am told, but was off again before the British
colony had done breakfast. 1 applaud his going to the
war, and it seems one more tie to hold us fast to beloved
France. . .

' The book referred to in this letter is A Guide to Modern English
History, of vvhicli Part I was pubhbhed in 1880.

.,.79] IV. K. CLIFFORD 441

March ().

I heard at nlirlu, March 3, that Clifford ^ had just died,
havintr been in a dying- state for about four days.
I hear to-day that he had no pain. I heard also that
he had directed his burial in l^ncrlancl. . .

The last time I saw Clifford he could not talk, and
she told me to speak to him louder than before. She
seemed to approve of my telling- him little things that
were meant to be gay and amusing. The time before
he had talked to me with point and vivacity about
Manning at the Metaphysical, and he listened with
interest to what I told him of the biography of Shad-
worth Hodgson. Feb. 14 we had a very gay ball at his
hotel. I had asked beforehand whether it would disturb
him. She said that he would like to hear the music and
to see my little girl in her ball dress ; and on the evening
itself she came to the ball-room when we arrived, first
of all the guests, and gaily brought us to the sick room
where he was lying on the bed, with two candles on
a dwarf table by his side. Caroline was struck, and one
may say charmed, by the pleasure he showed in greeting
her ; and when she was a little way off, talking to
Mrs. Clifford, I saw that though he tried to listen to me,
his eyes were fixed on a bright head and a pale blue
dress, his last bit of sweet girlish pleasantness. It was
as if one had put a flower on his counterpane. . .

One day he said, when I asked whether the flies
bothered him, that he did not much mind a fly's touch,
but he did resent a fly's spoiling his focus by crossing
the line of sight. One day I had been reading some-
thing about the blind girl Melanie de Salignac, who was

^ Professor W. K. Clifford.

442 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

perfect in geometry, and I asked him whether the Lan-
caster Professor Sanderson was born blind. He had
never heard of him. I said that the writer about blind
mathematicians said that as the blind perceive lines,
angles, curves, &c., by touch, so deaf mutes think in
visual images of words (others in sounds). He said he
himself thought not in sounds, but in visual images of
words. This seems to me interesting. I suppose his
eyesight was altogether livelier than that of other people ;
perhaps the great chess players have a similar superiority,
see twelve sets of chessmen in the head as the oreometer
sees the most complex cr^'stal or moon-spin.

It awed me a bit to sit with a man whose main thoughts
were absolutely incommunicable. The fascination lies
in that sort of simplicity which we call childlike, or that
grace which we call birdlike. Neoptolemus has visited
Philoctetes. I have seen an ingenuous man and had
just a glimpse of an edge of a pellucid mind which
I cannot measure.

I had reckoned on going with my young guest
Fred Lees to the funeral : in the cemetery, which is
clean and beautiful, lies a friend who died in 1854. I do
no^ wish to see a cofRn put on board a boat and swung
into a ship ; perhaps the friends want to meet over
a philosophical grave, but 1 think some philosophers
would rather be undc;r the nearest flowers.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

Madeira, March ai, 1879.

Clifford I had only met twice, three weeks ago, just
as his health broke. He was then asking me how
LuthcT w('nt to work, how he came to succeed. He

u;;9j /r. K. CLIFFORD. CAPf. BRADSIIAW 443

srrmt^d then to move mankind : perhaps he was the
most enthusiastic of Sadducees. , .

He enjoyed ^^^/>/^with a rare strange power of sight ;
his eyes spoke when his voice was abated. I fancy he
had constant perceptions of space and points and lines
wliich were incommunicable. I have seen very little
of men of fme mind. Of his mind I could get just a
olimpse. I used to talk to him quietly but gaily, and
It amused him. . .

She was charmed with his kind ingenuous look and
friendly hand. She wept for him, and for the last hour
before sleep she mused on widowhood, her own doom ;
and just her little touches were of more value to
Mrs. Clifford in grief than all my elaborate hours of
talk. But I was of some little use, directing the widow's
thoughts from that insatiable brooding worship of the
dead man. . .

He was fond of music, children, birds. He was very
affectionate with friends. When very near death he wrote
his last letter, just to express affection to Fred Pollock.
He is half described in a bit of Mdlle. d'Espinasse \ which
I enclose, written about M. de Malesherbes a hundred
years ago. To me out here he was as Neoptolemus to
Philoctetes ; but I had no arrow^s to lend. . .

We were all agog about H. M. S. Shah turning back
from St. Helena to help in Natal. The Admiral, who is
here, said, ' Bradshaw w^on't hesitate ; such a chance does
not come twice in a lifetime. It is the finest crew I ever
saw. Bradshaw will land 500.'

I was glad to read that the House of Commons cheered

for Bradshaw. That is the kind of thing that makes it

. worth while to belong to a nation. Even to us who

' Lettres de Mademoiselle d'Espinasse.

444 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

have to tarry by the stuff, it is a blessing to see a man
grasping Time, and no one grudging him the forelock.
It is twenty-eight years since South Africa became
heroic by the wreck of the Birkenhead. . .

The faults found with Eton, dress and gluttony, are
after all the faults of the English i \ million or upper
classes. ' Plain living ' is beyond the reach of British
courage. Cambridge used to gorge a few years ago.
Downing had a cook more indispensable for entrees
than any Routh for a Tripos. When the blessed poli-
ticians gave the herd of tax-payers cheap meat and
drink, the tax-payers, instead of saving, eat and drink
at a rate unknown to their fathers, and then grumble,
just as if they were living under the Head Thief of
Egypt. . .

The last country house I sojourned in was held by
elderly people, who groaned at their own viands, and
confessed piteously to me, when I preached my Spartan
doctrine, that they could not help the over-feeding.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Madeira, April $, 1879.

Disraeli is to me what Auld Clootie was to Burns,
only I feel that he //as taken a thought and mended.
He behaves very handsomely to the people whom he
employs. It is clear, from the newspapers, that he is
more wilHngly followed by able and good men than
were Peel, Russell, Palmerston, or (iladstone. He has
made no mistake like the overrating of Sir George
Lewis, Duke of Newcastle, De Grey, Ripen, Aberdare.
He gives his voung men a good innings, each in his
turn. He shelves Chehnsford, and generously shields

1879] ' PLAIN living: DISRAELI 445

Chelmsford II ; he shelves Hampton «ind Norton ; he
promotes Jviirhtfoot and Stephen. There has been no
such picker and backer of men in our time. Question :
Whether he did well to let Lord Salisbury choose that
Salvator Rosa g-entleman \ your friend at Simla ? As far
as I can feather from the papers, the Calcutta Govern-
ment is incompetent and has lost respect. I believe it
would answer to send Goschen to India as Viceroy and
Finance Minister. He is between two stools in party
politics. . .

To Hon. R. B. Brett,

Madeira, May 25, 1879.

Foillee on Contract as the base of the State ^ in
which I diink H. Sidgwick would be interested, though
no reference is made to what he has written so well
about it in his Ethics. I take up that book now and
then to see whether my brain is softening. He is much
more of a philosopher, much more comprehensive, than
the other luminaries of the day — M. Arnold, the brothers
Stephen, Maine, Lecky, Lubbock, Pollock. If he had
a good style, like Adam Smith, he would be very
eminent. . .

As ' oratory,' so also ' debating power ' is overrated
in London. It may be very appalling to a conscientious
thinker like Dodgson or Goschen to see how Harcourt
can break in upon a Cross or a Northcote or a Bourke at
a moment's notice ; can come in upon the Mutiny Bill after
the drudges have been patiently working at it for hours,
and assume a superiority over them. All this tells on quiet,
sensitive, cautious men at the time and in that particular
place, but it does not tell so much on the new^spaper

' Lord Lytton.

446 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

readers ; they are a hundred times as numerous as the
occupants of the galleries, and they value the sensible and
dignified men ; so do the people of the offices, the fly-
wheel of state machinery. . .

It is an odd habit, that of writing English so that it
will go straight into Latin or French, or both ; the secret
is a lavish use of verbs and relatives, with much absti-
nence from prepositions. I obeyed A. de Musset s rule
' Strike out the epithets.' I have struck out scores since
I found out that he did it with his own manuscript. . .

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Madeira, June 5, 1879.

The failure of the Cardwell localized army does not
disappoint me. I go back to my old notion of a three-
fold regiment: (i) a marching battalion; (2) a fencible
battalion, with recruits going and coming for the
marching battalion ; (3) a veteran battalion of married
men for castra stativa and forts, all under one name
and number, and with interchangeable ranks for officers.
Old army men always dwell on the esprit de corps ;
yet every day we sec officers shifted from their own
to other regiments. They stick to the notion that
a regiment is to be 900 for a field force ; yet the moment
a battalion goes to real work it splits into wings and
companies.

The truth seems to me that the dignity of a regiment
is kept up as long as it goes into line 400 strong at
least. Therefore why stuff a battalion at the last moment
with drafts from other battalions. Why not let 400 go
to represent the regiment, and send fifty after them by
the next ship, and so on. . .

It is a dreadful mistake the world makes to ascribe

t879] the army. old men 447

a measure of infallibility to old men who are too old
and ditrnified to be contradicted, whose life has ceased
to be cjcaJN {liable^ as IMato would say ; such men were,
or are, the Duke, Sir John Burgoyne, Lord St. Leonard's,
Lord Overstone, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord Pal-
merston ; he is the man of all that I have noticed whose
infallibility w^as most mischievous ; he ought to have
died in 1856.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Post Office, Madeira,

July 31, 1879.

. . . It is very remarkable that Wolseley's cheerfulness
throws quite a new light on the scene ; it seems as if he
had that sort of character which one seems to see in
Chanzy's photograph face, and which I saw in the live
face of Pocklington at Lord's one morning long ago,
the day that he saved Eton from defeat.

I fancy this temper is rarer even than the Nelson
eagerness to win. I fancy also that Chelmsford's gloomy
anxiety, not giving way but struggling in detail, is a rare
quality, and akin to romantic gallantry. I should have
liked to see his meeting with Wolseley. I am satisfied
the army is improved, in officers at least. The stuck-up
pro forutd officer, the ' superb sergeant ' of Kinglake,
seems to be scarcer amongst our Colonels and Generals.
As far as I can judge, Evelyn Wood is as true a soldier
as we ever had, and no nation could have done better
than we have done at Candahar.

To H. E. Luxmoore.

Madeira, Oct. 7, 1879.

Your welcome letter found me beginning a sort of
holiday, as we had been eight weeks pensioning with
old ladies in the hill country, on our P's and Q's. The

448 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

journey each way took only about seven hours, of which
two were spent with friends on the way ; but the effort
was considerable, and the change as great as if one went
between Bucks and Cumberland.

I have lost the most beautiful levels for quick walking,
and the cheerful sight of a rough lawn roofed by flat
apple trees bearing fruit handsomely, and groups of
belladonna lilies springing up as freely as thistles in
England, and bilberries turning to a fine redness on
moors full of gentle cows. I have come to a narrow
level between two rivers, half an hour's walk from town
and ocean, with tobacco in the soft dell on the west,
and everywhere small homesteads whose soil is too good
for cow grass.

We sit, in the dusk, on Roman stone benches curved
for the back and adorned with a sort of humble but
good mosaic : and we see the cottages, all detached,
lighting their little fires for the supper of sweet potato,
which is with some the only meal of the day : we see
also very white houses of the richer folk who grow
pine-apples and the like : we rent a seventeen-room
house with an acre of artificial ground, very dignified,
cool, and classically elegant, yet well supplied with ivy ■
and ferns : there is a holly close to a palm, a truncated
myrtle with wood of six inches diameter, the biggest of
weeping willows. The former owner was a man who
loved the place, it seems, and he made flowering plants
hucklle round the trunks of trees, agapanthus under
plane, azaleas which arc feebly blooming for the second
time under some unknown sub-tropical tree, convolvulus
under the graceful pcj)pcr trees which front the house,
and in ten years have grown to the height of the roof
in spite of damaging winds.

1879] DESCRIPTION OF MADEIRA 449

We pick tomatos nearly a pound welfrht, and fdl them
with mincemeat, or melt them into the beautiful onions
which come from the north side, an eig^ht hours' journey ;
wholly superior to Portugal onion. The best fruit tree
of the island is the custard apple, and it grows in our
fowl-yard ; our pig eats bean-stalks : we have one fig
tree and one sweet chestnut, which is now doing its
duty. There are few flowers just now ; the best is an
alamanda with big petals of a very lovely yellow, but in
January the camellia trees, tall as hollies and well trimmed,
will be in glory. The most highly prized of the plants
is the olea fragrans, which resents cutting— they say it
will graft on laurestinus— it is a perfect scent. Bamboos
, grow close to us, within reach, but not in our ground :
they make the perfectly tasteful trellis-work of all the
gardens ; we have, what I have not seen elsewhere and
do not much value, hydrangeas growing close up to the
walls ; generally, people here avoid putting climbers on
walls, probably because the heat of the walls kills them.
Hydrangeas were a weed in the hill country : here we
are in the vTTwpeia or intermediate level : we have vines
and an orange tree, but apparently not the great glories
of the town, the bougainvillias ^ Slc, not even the helio-
trope which hangs on some walls as a weed. We have
a gardener at ^^19 a year, who loves the place and does
ever^^thing like a gnome, unbidden : but he has to go
a terrible way to fetch our drink water. Luckily the
cook, a man and a grandfather, likes going to town for
a talk, and brings huge loads up, otherwise we should
be up a tree. We believe we can be cool here all the
year : it is a comfortable house, barring the mosquitoes,
which are inseparable from the stored water on which
one s gardening depends. I was asleep on a folding-chair

G g

450 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct. 1879

on the croquet-ground an hour this afternoon, thanks to
the plane tree and cedar, but I have to wear a veil of
coarse net, hiding- hands, and I had to take a dose of
Wheaton's International Law first, and I had the benefit
of purring talk, as our extremely fat nurse was giving
her beloved mistress a long and minute account of all
the poor widows in our parish. . .

It is a pity the English in these last hundred years
have not taken more pains with the Madeirians, . . Many
of them seem to me better than the pleasant Nile Arabs,
much better than the Irish ; but all say and prove that
their priests do them hardly any good : they prefer
French priests ; and I learn that some of them would
be glad to be quite free to go to their own churches
for Mass, and also to read the Bible, sing hymns at
home, &c.

The bailiff or lodge-keeper of the small country house
where we pensioned is a very happy man ; his sons wash
their feet every night and come to him for his blessing-
before they go to bed : the miller has three Bibles, and
gets neighbours to his house for conventicle ; the only
shopkeeper stops all drunkenness ; we saw hardly any
mendicants, and heard of only two paupers in the whole
parish. We were there eight weeks, living with the
people who knew all that could be known. Their
gathering at the threshing-floor, round for the oxen's
sake, but used now only by a machine, not by oxen,
was a very pleasing sight ; but on incjuiry one discovers
that their obsolete metayer farming gives much trouble,
tempts to much fraud, produces little crops, leaves
much waste ; and their using heads and shoulders on
paths fit for wheelbarrows, and on roads fit for carts, is
deplorable. •

Jan. 1880] WORDSWORTH. VIRGIL 451

76> Rev. C. IV. Ftcrse.

1879 (?).

Mat Arnolds paper in Alacmillan on Wordsworth
hits the nail on the head now and then : he names as
his favourites ' Michael,' ' Highland Reaper,' and the
' Fountain ' : he did not seem to see that most of the
gems of Wordsworth are rather slight things to build
so great a name upon : a man who tries to make a big
thing, and fails again and again, can hardly be put
anywhere near Milton.

I have just observed in talking to C. that the founder
of historical romance is Virgil : the Aeneid is the real
forerunner of the Lay of the Last Minstrel^ more so
of Waverley. It is seldom, of late years, that I get a
chance of hitting in talk, but I still do in writing.

I noticed the other day that the lines of Wordsworth
on Venice —

' Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great has passed away'

— are a good modulation of the line which scholars find
great and hopelessly unapproachable :

* Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.'

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Madeira, Jan. 8, 1880.

. . . Northcote v^as right in saying that Russell's and
Gladstone's negligence got us into the Alabama trouble.
Gladstone has understood Italian politics from the tourist
point of view, but I see no proof that he has ever under-
stood European affairs from the Foreign Office point
of view. . .

Gg2

452 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

I must get something to read ; perhaps the first book
of Maccabees in Greek. The Maccabees were not more
in the right than the Afghans are now.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Madeira, March 7, 1880.

Do you remember the laugh we had, you and
F. Wood and I, over pigeons called Yankee Doodle,
Hail Columbia, Greeley, &c. Similarly our cock is
called Solomon ; he was a grand fellow, quite a prize cock,
and very good to his harem. Our wicked cook being
instructed to buy eatable cockerels took advantage of
Madame's being in bed to buy two old cocks, and before
she was down they jointly fell on Solomon, put out an
eye, &c. We call them Absalom and Jeroboam, and
banish them from the yard ; they do very well in the
garden, and make love in vain to Abigail, who walks
about with her seventeen chicks. The same cook burnt
down a shed containing two big sets of eggs, but the
hens, Zeruiah and Abishag, escaped, and they are sitting
in the ruins with Zillah, Deborah and Tabitha. Deborah
is rearing turkeys and geese, the rest are fowls.

To Bernard Holland.

Madeira, March 13, 1880.

I got your welcome letter March 10, and wrote a long
answer March 11, and tore it up to-day, as I was at the
time rheumatic. This island is five days from South-
ampton ; the single fare is £20 ; some people come
by Liverpool in seven days, a good deal cheaper. . . If!
you have ^^50 to spare for a six weeks' holiday you
might do worse than come here, but you might do

i88o] LITERATURE AND NATIONAL CHARACTER 453

better— for instance, Northern Syria must be more
worth visitinq;; but just now the country I should visit
if I were a young^ man with eye and tongue is Bosnia.
I believe the best politics nowadays are to be found
in the composite dominions of the best king I ever
heard of, Francis Joseph. N.H. I am a republican, but
bent on being fair to kings. . .

I have just read Sir Joseph Hooker's Travels in
Morocco^ the first book for some time that I have seen
belonging to a class of books that I used to value, books
of travels wTitten by scientific men for general reading.
I fancy the science man observes things about human
affairs quite as well as the economist, lawyer, or debater,
much better than the superficial bookmaker. I fancy
science is the stem out of which literature should bud.
Apart from the physical sciences there is the science
of law ; but I do not consider history or political
economy at all commensurable therewith. You are
working at law, and at the age at which it ought to
come on very quickly and stick : if you had gone in
for law at Cambridge, it would have been a very useful
introduction to the real study. . .

The Pall Mall critic does not perceive that I wrote
of literature only as a thing concerning the growth of
the national character, not for its ow^n sake. It is
possible to hold that States exist in order that people
like Swinburne may exist : of course rhymes, like
pictures and upholstery, are interesting as results of
civilization ; but I prefer trying to see how the active
people are influenced by the sentiment, the imagina-
tion, &c., which are engendered partly by poets, painters,
musicians, &c. I fancy the active men are influenced
generally at second touch — not by their contemporaries

454 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

so much as by predecessors — but they are, anyhow,
affected by special forces of sentiment which some of
their contemporaries bring to bear on them. . .

I should hke to know w^hat Tennyson thinks of
Shelley. The Golden Treasury is supposed to repre-
sent Tennyson's judgement, and in it Shelley appears
to advantage. Question, whether there is anything but
Cenci worth two readings, written by Shelley and not
put into the Golden Treastiry. My publisher has just
printed, and his clever daughter has just given me.
Selected Poems of Shelley^ with a devout preface by
Richard Garnett. In this volume there is a letter to
Maria Gisborne which is despicable, and I don't find
three pages running that do not weary me w^ith tau-
tology and insincerity ; on the other hand, I heartily
admire Swinburne's Atalanta^ Bothzvell^ Songs before
Sunrise. . .

I can't write any more, but I thank you for being
faithful and respectful to your poor old teacher.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Madeira, April -20^ 1880.

In writing of books ^ I try to consider how they affect
the national character so as to make the active or repre-
sentative part of the nation more thoughtful, more
generous, more tender, or the like. I hold that Heart
of Midlothian was very much more effective on the
minds of Hritons than all the Lake poets put together.
I hold that Scott is the supreine wan of letters after
W. S., and before our lot, Teiinyson, G. l^liot, Currer
Hell, &c. ; and I deliberately think that I have set this

' In A Guide to Modern English History, Part II.

i88o] SHELLEY. SCOTT. HENRY JAMES 455

forth bricfl\', Init distinctly and impressively. I wrote
about Scott in 1878, about September, laboriously — tore
up the section — wrote it again in the winter as it now
stands. . . I maintain that it is very rare that one hits
the nail on the head in writing- about an author's
influence, and I feel sure that I have in this case. . .

I shall have a very delicate job soon — a section on
the various attempts made inside, behind the political
scenes, to mend the people, by Chalmers, H. Martineau,
Carlyle, J. S. Mill, J. H. Newman, Dickens. I am de-
termined to treat Dickens with more respect than other
such nie7t, with less respect than Mrs. Gaskell, &c.
And then I hope some of the better fancies of my youth
will float up when I write again about Peel. It is odd
but true that I cherish his image, though the high
Whigs call him the Pecksniff of politics.

To H. O. Sturgis.

Madeira, 1880.

I am hoping to go through Coppee in July. I like
Daisy Miller^ but I prefer the Four Meetings.
H. James goes a little too far in elpcoveta^ in Bret
Harter}^, or undertoning, or laconic surprises, or trap-
doors of narrative. But it is a fault refreshing to one
cloyed by the garrulity and the showman proclamations
of Thackeray and Trollope.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Apiil 28, 1880.

I lately tried for 'historical' purposes to read Pelkant^
which of course I read with interest as a boy. It seems
to me as unsavoury as stale beer. I do not feel so about
all the books of that age. I can read Violet with great

456 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

interest. I mean to go through a short course of
Mrs. Gore.

The Court party or Tories ought to have turned
Beaconsfield out to grass, and put Cairns at their head.

It was high time to check the Court party, and to
convince the excellent county members that they must
not assign to a clever person : the French assigned to
Louis Napoleon and suffered for it — it will be here-
after reckoned an odd delinquency on the part of the
gentlemen of Britain to have given carte blanche to
Beaconsfield and Salisbury. Neither of them deserved
it. They are not even clever enough. It is really stupid
to pin faith on an expert like Rawlinson, to follow
Fitzjames Stephen through the wall or window, to let
Bartle Frere take the bit into his mouth. . . They have
got the nation into the most embarrassing, slipper^',
nightmarish war that it has been in since 1782. . .

I suggested long ago what I now see is talked of as
probable — Goschen's going to India. I hope to see
Kimberley at Constantinople with extraordinary powers
and with full control over Egypt. Lansdowne at
Vienna, Rosebery at Dublin, Cockburn at Jericho. . .

A republic is a very good thing. It is not necessarily
loose in structure, nor indifferent to virtue or property
or good taste. The essential thing is that government
shouki be carried on by gentlemen, by the best informed
gentlemen, by the most considerate of the well-informed
gentlemen. ' Honour all men,' ' Look not each on his
own things,' ' Wash one another's feet,' ' Submit to
testing and refuting {a.v^iiT(x(rro^ jSlos a/3iWos),' ' Life
unexamined is intolerable.' Such maxims, whether
Pauline or Platonic, will serve in a republic as well as
in a nondescript polity like ours.

i88o] LORD BEACONSFIELD. NEWSPAPERS 457

tTo Hon. R. B. Breit.
May 4, 1880.

... I look at the Spectator ; it seems seldom to hit
a nail on the head ; it seems hopelessly juvenile, tire-
somely candid and viewy. The regularly measured-to-
con tract leaders of the Times and Daily News are to
a man of my age seldom worth reading through ; we
do not relish da capo movements. I fancy the Observer
would be a good stock to graft upon ; it is grown up,
temperate without being solemn, legal without being
pedantic. . . None of the papers, except the Pall Mall
and Guardian^ seem to me to spread the net wide
enough. . .

Where can one read what one hears : the latest
account of Queensland or Bosnia, a critical description
of a foreign vship of war, an account of how some law
passed some few years ago in Sweden is working, the
reflections of an enlightened Dutchman on the war in
Acheen, the prognostications of a New Yorker about
de Lesseps }

The telegraphic page in the Times I find less in-
teresting than the old correspondence ; no doubt the
telegrams, however garrulous, help the leaders, but to
read them is like going into the kitchen to see the fowls
picked or the peas shelled.

To C. Kegan Paul.

Madeira, August 14, 1880.

I send by this post, registered, a lump of MS. I find
i it shamefully dirty and illegible, chiefly because I used
bad paper and could not get crow-quills, till I found
the University Store in Long Acre, over which I had,

458 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

as a new customer, sufficient authority to get them to
buy me crowquills, without which life is a struggle
and a glissade.

To Capt. A. H. Dritfnmond.

Madeira, October 7, 1880.

I heard about your beau-frere as Agamemnon ^. I had
a clever, pretty niece in one of his audiences, and she
wrote of it with some joy ; it is a very odd event ; it
would bore ine worse than Handel's Messiah. Perhaps
our sons may sit out the whole trilogy ; the old men in
Agamemnon are so absurd that it must have been the
height of courage to say their distichs ; I always used
to think of the King of Men as being beside a shower-
bath when stabbed. The only really interesting Greek
tragedy, the only one in which one cares a twopenny
damn, as the Duke would have said, what is going to
happen, is the Philocietes. . .

I am enfant du Steele^ wholly given over to Mdlle. de
Belleisle, Marquis de Villemer^ Le Village^ Bettine^ Per-
dican et Camille^ De^Jti-Monde, Dame aux Ca^nellias^
Marion de Lorme, 8ic., &c. Greek plays are to French
plays what cold boiled veal is to snipe.

To H. O. Stttrgis.

Camacha, Madeira, October 24, 1880.

I am reading Sainte-Beuve's account of the Cid. He'
shows as plainly as even I could wish that the real Cid'
was, as far as there is any evidence, a mere hand-to-mouth,
plundering, mercenary rowdy ; that about the beginning'
of the thirteenth century Spain, like France, and evenl

' R. Benson acted the part of Clytaemncstra in A.csc)\y\\x^\4ganiemnoH\
played at Oxford and in the College Hall at Eton, 1880.

i88oj 'Agamemnon: chivalry— honour 459

Kno:l«'^n(l, hciran to l)ii(I into inventiveness, and invented
a rudiment of tine sentiment; that the retrospective
imaqr-ination then bei^^an to orild the Cid's leo-cnd, hut
that it was not till the sixteenth century, after Tasso was
known (not that /ic mentions Tasso, but I always do on
these occasions), that, first in Spain, then in France —
i. e. in Corneille's head — the Cid's image was draped in
the new robes of passion, conflicting- motives, honour, &c.
Corneille's tragedy, then (A. D. 1637), is a thing that may
be fairly taken as an epoch — a point reached, a stepping-
stone, a point of ' take ofif ' for a leap.

The next thing I wMsh to know is this. Did Cor-
neille's Ctd come over to England, so as to be read by
such men as Sunderland the Cavalier and chivalrous
lover of Sacharissa, who read in his tent when besieging
Gloucester ; or Milton, or Falkland, or Wither, or
Man^ell, or any of the heroic gentlemen of our un-
equalled Civil War ? I have always believed that such
men were, through Spenser and Fairfax (translator of
Tasso), moved poetically towards an ideal of love, duty,
and honour.

Chivalry — Honour^.

I found Bradshaw had nothing to say against my view
as set forth in these notes on Chivalry (1854). In the
twenty-two years passed since I have been away from
libraries and have not explored, I have frequently
come upon things that bear out my view, to wit, that
the tournaments and the romances had no perceptible
effect on conduct, and that the courteous treatment
of (i) women, (2) captives, (3) enemies is hardly to be
found in mediaeval history. . .

' 1876.

46o LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

The main point is that the sentiment of Honour has
been almost created by persons who more or less learnt it
from the Romans (Greeks), and it has h^^n Jbced by the
creation of professional armies dating from about 1 650.
It is a lay thing ; it is a rival of the priesdy sentiment
of saintliness.

To Sir F. Pollock,

Oct. 2, 1 891.

In naming three Romans I was sorry not to be able to
name Crassus, because people would be sure to think
I meant Marcus Crassus, the triumvir — his son Publius
apud Plutarch seems to me a true knight.

I find nothing like high-minded action in Chaucer — it
is of no use to cite his portrait of a knight, a list of
qualities not shown in action. A Greek or a Roman
poet would be ashamed of Griselda's husband. I suppose
Chaucer takes at second-hand whatever his contem-
poraries and near predecessors knew about good men,
that is, mostly, copies in aquarelle of such portraits of
gentlemen as one finds in Valerius Maximus, whose
book, I was told by Bradshaw, was in every Middle Age
library. I feel, hardly know, that the Middle Age had a
glimmering tradition of Roman _/f<7^^vy= honour, kept up
a literature, just as it had a vague notion of Saul, son of
Kish, Judas Maccabaeus, &c.

When I lectured long ago on Chivalry I had been
rummaging a little, wishing to find gentlemen that had
really acted. I got two or three scraps, which I value.
But it was borne in on me that Bayard was the first rather
than the last of true knights.

Roman goodness I do not consider as an invention or
inspiration, but a tradition modified by Cireece. In
Greek fiction I find things infinitely above the mediaeval

i89i] MEDIAEVAL HONOUR 461

standard. The Kriiorht's Tale is said to draw from the
* Theseide,' which I suppose draws at second-hand from
such a source as l^uripides' Supplices.

1 lincl well-read people unacquainted with that play,
and for the benefit of one of the few people that talk
with me I lately translated into blank verse the speech of
Adrastus describing- five of his comrades. Tennyson,
I am told, pricked up his ears at this.

However, there is nothing in Euripides' Supplices
comparable with the Neoptolemus of Sophocles. Several
times have I read Philocteies with young people of both
genders, and they have been struck and interested with
the development under circumstances of a man of honour
— this they find far more interesting than such a thing
as Chaucer's image, stamped once for all, of an ideal
gentleman.

Similarly the Emperor Otho, whose death Goethe
admired, is interesting, because the man of pleasure turns
into the man of honour.

I observe that Dante knows Lucan — does he know
Lucan's Cato } (Stat dum lixa bibat.)

Shakespeare, living in the dawn of Chivalry, makes

his Henry speak nobly about comradeship. Who now

remembers, what Dr. Arnold pointed out, that Sem-

pronius Gracchus (apud Livium) forestalled in action the

; Agincourt fiction ?

When I was an undergraduate Digby's Broad Stone
I of Honour moved me, and I went on to his Mores
Catholici 2ivA Compitum. In mid hfe I perceived that
Digby, like myself, had searched in the tilting hedgehog
I ransom age for bits of noble action, that, like me, he had
I found as much in Greek books bearing on the point as in
I Chronicles of Crusades, &c. He showed me the bearing

462 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct. 1891

of the line which I paraphrased — olh^v t6 y alcry^pbv Kavovi
rov Kakov ixaOoiv. But he was in almost every page falling"
back on his staple commodity, saintliness. I approve of
his book, in the first state before he became a R. C.
When he re-made it into Tancred, Godfrey, &c., it ceased
to have a charm for me.

In old age I have had leisure to read in synoptic
voluminous books the Middle Age history, England,
Scotland, Switzerland, Florence, Venice, Russia, France.
Not having a library, I have not read any old chronicles
lately, nor shall I — it is lost labour. I ask my discipulae
to show me all that they love in Mallory, Chaucer,
Dante, &c. I get nothing new. They aver that St.
Louis is a poor creature. They can tell me of only one
case of friendship (apart from devotion of man to master)
— this is Eadmer and Anselm. They know of no
altruism beyond the Blanche Nef They own that no
one in the Middle Age did so fine a thing as Philip
Sidney did when he risked Court promotion, because
Elizabeth behaved ill to his good father. Sir Henry.
They can quote nothing before Robert Spencer, Earl of
Sunderland, 1643, to illustrate Lovelace's —

* I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more.'

1 am (juite open to conviction ; but at present I say,
as I used to say, uncontradicted, to Bradshaw, the age of
chiv^alry is not the age of the Crusades or of the Black
Prince. Chivalry, as an institution, is interesting chiefly
as a feeble prelude to that ' Court,' which began with
Francis I.

1 agree entirely with the only friend I ever had that
was older than myself, who said some twenty-five years

Jan. iQ^iy broad stone of honour! CIIIVALRY^e'^

ago — ' In tilt' Middle Age of England the men worth
knowing are the Bishops.'

I shall continue to say to my visitors that Rome, i.e.
Li\y, Cicero, Horace, \^irgil, Lucan, Tacitus, Juvenal,
carried on with Greek exaltation the Greek torch of
honour, that the Middle Age men of action of all sorts
were incessantly engaged in bargains, and that the Early
Modern Age, represented by such a book as Elyot's
Governoio^^ by Tasso, by Spenser, was the age in which
the worn-out Mallor^^ Chivalry w^as idealized to some
purpose, and gentlemen's families drew virtue from the
Classics, especially Plutarch, and from the Bible, including
that book which in my childhood I loved as I loved
Tales of a Grandfather^ the first book of Maccabees ;
and that the two periods, in which the warriors behaved
as the poets would wish them, were the period of
Cavaliers and Puritans, and the period of 1 775-1 782. . .

To A. D. Coleridge,

Madeira, Jan. 20, 1881.

Did you ever hear what Auber said when some one
observed that it was e^inuyeux to grow old } He said,
Mais eiifi7i on n'apas trouved' autre inoyen pour vivre
longtemps. This simple axiom applies to residence in
Madeira. I think I shall doze on long enough to read
some day that a ship has gone from the Atlantic across
the American Isthmus ; that w411 be news to console
me for many a foolish war and many a failure in legis-
lation. It has been a dull life mostly all this time ; but
I have witnessed the annexation of the Punjab, the
•release of Rome, Milan, Venice, &c., the tunnelling of
the Alps, the Suez Canal, and the fall of Beaconsfield.

464 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Madeira, March 13, i88i.

I have been driven wild by foolish telegrams ; at last
I get the papers and see that the Majuba or Spitz Kop
defeat was thoroughly disgraceful and disheartening.
A ' scientific ' officer took, it seems, the pick of his little
force to execute a clever device. He put two-thirds
of his men — twenty officers and about 350 others — into
a natural redoubt, 200 yards by fifty. There they lay
in ambush, having three days' food and plenty of time
for completing a breastwork ; and I believe the sailors
were there with a Gatling. Then for seven hours they
potted and were potted at. Then in a few minutes
they were hustled out of their redoubt: they did not
even fix bayonets. They were swept off by men who
had firelocks without bayonets. It is really as bad as
Gardiner's affair at Prestonpans, 1745 (see Waverley).
I can imagine the Boadiceas bolting. Captain Denison
of Encounter said to me that he did not feel sure of
sailors on shore being at all steady. I can imagine the
58th men, unnerved by their previous repulse, being
untrustworthy. Kut it is too shocking to hear of two
companies of the 92nd — of the regiment which stubbornly
held the Col de Maya in 1813 with fighting that would,
as Napier says, have graced Thermopylae ; the regiment
that restored the fight at St. Pierre ; the regiment that
Roberts had been praising, full of tough veterans — allow-
ing themselves to be carried away in a loose bully,
trampling down Commander Cameron, leaving Colley
to be shot, leaving the Boers with only one man killed
and five wounded.

This is the upshot of our improved lircarms, of our

i88il MAJUBA HILL. TRANSVAAL 465

n -w flexible drill, of our competitive oflicers' education,
of our renewed Sandhurst, of our Colley the chosen
Elisha of our Wolseley — our Colley the chosen military
adviser of our Lytton. . .

I have been predictinq;- that the Boer war will be over
by All Fools' day, but the devil of it is that it will be
a match drawn in their favour.

Your masters have been Caudine -forking, as far as
I can guess from their answers in the House. My hope
is that the Boers' victories will have set the whole of
South Africa in a blaze and burnt your capitulation,
so that we may have a real struggle.

What we feel here, being in constant communication
with the Cape, is that the Africanders or degenerate
Dutch are sure to be swamped by the growth of the
British population, hke the FVench in Canada and the
Dutch in Demerara; to allow Dutch States alongside
of English States out there seems kind and liberal, but
if the towns are all filled up by Britons and the like, as
Bloemfontein seems to be, the Dutch republics cannot
be so homogeneous or comfortable, unless they have the
luck to be under so sensible a man as Brand, who was
brought up at Cape Town, and is a gentleman. . .

It is history that the migration of the Boers w^as
mainly due to our not letting them enforce labour on
the Hottentots. We were rather harsh and peremptory,
but we w^ere in the main right.

There is a certain similarity in the case of the Boers
to the case of the Mormons. The Mormons did not
endanger Uncle Sam by disturbing the aborigines ; but
U. vS. thought he had a right to coerce and assimilate
them. . . Both Mormons and Boers erred in not being
more rigorous in excluding foreigners, if they wished to

Hh

466 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

be free and to keep their own customs. As soon as
they cherished foreigners as their traders, artizans, &c.,
they must have expected to find their absolute autonomy
disputed. . .

I have been forty hours meditating- on Colley's hand-
ling of his detachment on that hill-top ; he must have
allowed about 30,000 cartridges to be slowly, stupidly,
uselessly wasted on stones and bushes, without sending
for more ammunition to his reserves or his head-quarters ;
he must have had his 400 fellows under his eye, knowing
that they were in no sort of formation, no touch, stupidly
assuming that the Boers would go on potting till sunset;
then when the Boers made that rush w^hich our quasi -
Prussian modern drill has for these ten years taught our
officers to consider the catastrophe of every little war
tragedy, he had no means of meeting it, no counter'
stroke, no reserve of men in hand. Remember that
when suddenly charged by horse, a battalion at Quatre
Bras, said to be young soldiers, formed in a moment tzvo
lines back to back ; here, after these years of drill, the
120 volunteers of the 92nd behaved just about as well
as the shop-keepers of the Rue de la Paix in their fight
with the Communards. Could any London A'olunteers
have done worse? . . .

In the great Roberts harangue we hear of esprit de
corps. Now we find our generals again and again
wasting this force. If a regiment fights best when
thinking mainly of itself, we should send a whole
battalion or a whole wing on a detached service like
this Colley job. One can imagine the whole 92nd feeling
it a point of honour to hold the hill, and dying there,
face to foe, as the 66th did at Maiwand. But the regi-
mental sjiirit seems to be generally indulged in a less

,88i] MAJUDA HILL. REGLMENTS 467

safe way ; each rci^imcnt wishes to have a v\^\\t to say
that it was in every combat ; therefore it sends a repre-
sentative company or two, and a little force of 400 or
500 men h.is no unity, no character, no point of honour,
no rallyin<r.point.

We want, if you please, at this turn of our affairs, the
converse of proper names on colours and clasps on
bosoms. We want significant gaps in the Army List.
In my youth we had one, between the 4th and the 6th
Dragoons, and it was for the Castlebar Races. . .

In 1842 we were led to expect that there would be
a second gap, between the 43rd and 45th Foot, for
Skelton s battalion was in disgrace at Cabul ; but I sup-
pose it was let off for the sake of Quatre Bras.

If I had been in power I would have struck out the
24th Foot for Isandula, where all was lost, even honour —
all but the colours.

How can we expect an army to be respected which
contains regiments that inscribe on their colours C/n'l'
lianwallah^ a rout for which the 14th Dragoons might
have been obliterated justly.

I have to tell my friends the history of the 92nd, and
yet the Army List does not say that it carries Col de
Maya ; and St. Pierre-Lincelles, which I have never been
able to discover in history, figures on the colours of the
Guards. The beautiful battle of Sauroren is not to be
found in the Army List.

W^e go on calling ships by vulgar names, such as
Bouncer ; snobbish names, such as Sultan^ S/iah, Royal
This and That; unpronounceable names, such 'dLS> MtUine\
and we let our lads grow up with no naval tribute, no
naval record of Camperdown, vSalamanca, Tarifa, Luck-
now, Inkerman.

H h 2

468 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

Roberts's march, &c. (which he has been saying here
he could not have accomplished except with troops
picked by himself) are excellent feats ; but there has
been literally nothing since Inkerman to prove that we
have Infantry fit to stand against Europeans.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

April II, 1 88 1.

Wolseley, in the Nineteenth Centtiry on Short Service,
speaks of our victories — Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman.
This is enough to make one despair. A Crimean soldier
and a leading authority believes that we won a victory
at Balaclava! The plain fact is that the Russians that
day gained a position of the highest value to them,
which they kept to the end of the winter, if not to the
end of the siege. . . Except in a few bits of trench-fighting
we never obtained any advantage over the Russians after
November 5, 1854, Inkerman, and we have never met
any people of European blood or training since 1855 till
we met these Boers ; and now a German rightly infers
front OMX four little defeats in the CoUey war that we
are not fit to encounter any Europeans.

We pride ourselves on our regiments, and we scrape
every barrack-yard to make up a battalion for export.
Yet when it comes to the scratch we are afraid to risk
a whole battalion, and if by chance a battalion is
destroyed, as the 24th was at Isandula, we fancy the
world is splitting up.

W'e have lowered the standard of military honour.

In India there are officers now wearing Abyssinian
medals who never disembarked on that coast at all.
I believe the Marines and the Artillery, though they
have no kilts or regimental colours or fancy names,
arc still to be trusted. . .

j88i] military honour, nelson 469

To A. D. Coleridge.

Madeira, April 1^^ 1881,

I miss the beloved squadron ; perhaps I may be back
in time to see it move off, perhaps under sail, which
would be to me of all siofhts the most comfortinof. All
these years I have only once seen a war-ship under
sail. Two years ago Drtcid skirted as close as possible
the curving- New Road, which is the promenade of
Funchal ; its skipper did not know he was giving me
a treat, he did it to compliment the girl who is now
a bride in my house. We live not far from Nelson's
track, not far from the sea-path of Keats in Sttperb^
who had his studding-sails nailed to the boom all the
way, struggling to keep up with Nelson, and catching
him up at night, and dining with him when becalmed.
I have been going all over that once, twice, thrice more,
in Lanfrey's admirable history, in Nelson's despatches, in
the heavy volumes about Sir William Parker, which
contain delightful things half buried in heavy letters.
One night I was reading Lanfrey's admirably honest
and critical account of Trafalgar. Madame, at the other
end of the talkie, writing, looked up and observed that
I was weeping over my book. ' Yes,' I said, ' I am
weeping as I wept fifty years ago over the death of
Nelson ; ' that is literally true. Before I w^ent to school
at nine, I vras as much taken up with Nelson, &c., as any
one ever is with cricketers or race-horses. And now the
Royal Navy is more precious because the Royal Army
has failed. Here in this village I meet an old maid,
and a man of my own age so blind and so deaf that he
seems much older than I am, and these two I find sore
and sick, just as I am, about the disgraceful flight of our

470 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

men from Majuba ; but the horror of it is that in London
people do not seem to feel it. . . Since that news came
I have been unwilling to write letters, but I have twice
said what I now say to you, and I beg you to pass
it on. * Suppose 360 clerks from the Strand, or shop-
men from Oxford Street, or even 360 flunkeys, had been
at Majuba, could they have done less than the 360 picked
men whom Colley had there for seven hours wasting
their cartridges and taking no care to secure themselves
against assault, though they had tools with them for
making field-works — fixing bayonets against men who
had none, waiting to be charged by men who had
scrambled up a steep rough place, trampling down their
friends, jumping thirty feet down rocks, skulking in
bushes } ' Besides this main disgrace, which I deliberately
say is the worst thing since Castlebar Races in 1798, there
are in print Colley 's letters, stating (i) That at Laing's
Nek only some of the mounted men did their duty, and
that twenty more horsemen like Brownlow would have
broken the Boers, which is confirmed by Joubert's letter;
(2) That at Ingogo he could have rolled up the Boers'
left wing if he could have dared use his horsemen.
These two passages prove that a troop of King's Dragoon
Guards failed before raw farmers who had no bayonets.

Then it is also clear from Colley 's account that the
60th, though called Rifles, though proud of their skir-
mishing, did not at Ingogo hit even the horses of the
Boers, who took every position that suited them ; so it
appears that mounted infantry can trot about safely in
the presence of our marksmen. . .

As to my own feelings, I feel sorry that Carlyle did
not say something kind of England in his latter years,
when so ready to butter Germany and Yankeeland. If

i88.] CARLYLE. LORD BEACONSFIELD 471

I over write my lon^-meditated chapters on the years
1836-59, I shall say of him that he is to be pitied for
railinq;- ao^ainst the j^encration in which Fowell Huxton,
William Hcntinck, vSenior, Th.omas Drummond, Chalmers,
were doino; their excellent work : it is like Tacitus
writing- about the times of Nero without knowing
St. Paul and St. Peter.

To Hon. R. B. Breii.

Madeira, May i, 1881.

I am ver^' glad we save i^2, 000 a year by Beaconsfield's
death. I have so much regard for the English aristocracy
that I can hardly imagine its ever tolerating for a year
a leader that is not good rather than bad. I believe
Dizzy was very bad in his w^orst days, and began to get
better in 1852, when he had to sit alongside of honourable
men, such as the late Derby, Spencer Walpole, Duke of
Northumberland. I believe he long ago repented his
spitefulness towards dear old Sir Robert. I believe he
has had a genuine aftection for some yotmg men, and
a singular skill in choosing- men for office and giving
them fair innings. But as for wivSdom, constructive
power, constancy to principle, he is, I fancy, below the
English standard ; about a peg below Rattazzi, Soult,
Talleyrand ; two below Thiers.

His authority with the party w^hich professes to be
sensible (and is) proves that we are still, after all the
Aristotle, Plato, J. S. Mill, Carlyle, &c., apt to be
mastered by showy phrases w^hich look like aphorisms,
and by that quiet kind of brag which is best called
' London Assurance.'

It remains on my mind that the recent European policy

472 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

of Beaconsfield was called by the old Orleanist hardi
et habile. . . B., anyhow, must have credit for standing
up to Bismarck and for closing with Schouvaloff.

To A, D, Coleridge.

June 20, 1881.

There is nothing in Nature, that is in Not-Man, at all
like music ; even the simplest form of a tune has a plain
purpose of construction and adjustment. The forward
plunge and resorbence of a wave, the declension of that
kind of echo which is the iteration of one sound at
several points of incidence, the quivering of small stems
such as aspen stems simultaneously with the swaying
of branches — these and other phenomena may be thought
fair images of some musical effects, but how utterly
inadequate they are !

The boatmen on the Nile when rowing sing what,
perhaps, may be safely called a bar, not necessarily
commensurate with the pityhts or oar pulse ; after a few
minutes their leader changes the words of the chant or
song, and with the words he changes also the move-
ments and cadence; neither the first nor the second is
specially appropriate to the action of rowing, it is the
artistic pleasure of variety that gives the motive. Here
again, though the Arab's voice and ear and notion of
melody are different from the Englishman's, yet the
Knglishman, whether acquainted with music or not,
enters into the enjoyment of the changes. It seems that,
if harmony had never been discovered, there would have
been musical sympathyamongst men, akin to their genenJ
agreement about vital beauty, about colour and form,
and the charm of imitation. Were there no harmony,
btill there would be a difference between tune-makers :

i88i] MUSIC 473

one would be limited to stanzas like a ballad, another
would luxuriate in flow and in climbing- like an ode,
there would be mannerists in rhythm or movement, and
others masters of all movements ; and we should know
them from one another by their preferences in these
simple things of time and beat, and we should admire
supremely him that was most free and various. This is
one reason why one who knows not music delights in
Beethoven.

To A. D. Coleridge,

Madeira, June 22, 1881.

Music is as inconceivable to the ignorant as conic
sections ; for aught I know^ you may derive in sincerity
a fine sensation from some ' change of key ' or ' return to
a key,' or some other transcendental manoeuvre ; but I,
and probably Tennyson and Millais, get sensations quite
apart from any theory— from a touch of melody which
happens to coincide with some reflection in one's mind.
Thus have I seen lads reared in austere religion and
patrician refinements burst with enthusiasm over the
Marseillaise, and insist on its being sung all through
thrice; it was because the tune suited their sentiment
of favour to France against Prussia in 18 70-1.

Now such people as I go to operas and concerts, so
that in the course of life I may have spent .^100 on
opera and concert tickets, and I may have got for this
about a hundred sensations or thrills, as from the one
little bit of tune in Etoile dtt Nord^ which I remember
at its first performance, when a man walked off whistling-
it and I caught it ; or from the horn in the last scene of
Hernam^ or from the Marchesa's English air sung in
the Barber^ or from Christine's first utterance in Fatist^

474 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

or from the girls' chorus in Mirella. So have I sat
through virtuous plays, and got, at a great cost, single
sensations, as when Laertes jumps into Ophelia's grave
to grapple with Hamlet. These sensations are the land-
marks of life. Sometimes they cost nothing, as when
a fiddler struck up in the Ticino ferry just as I looked
up the long water-line and saw the Alp snow at the end
of it, or as when I landed at the Gosau lake under a little
shower of ' Santa Lucia ' (which I am told is a rotten
air) sung by German picnickers in unison, or as when ;
I heard in the year 1832, on Windsor Terrace, the Due
de Reichstadt's Waltz, or in 1876 ' Lochaber ' played by ;
the Scots Guards at St. James'. On the whole, the j
unbought sensations are equivalent to the bought ; yet,
as a cold calculation, I would contribute in St. George's
Hall, Liverpool, or in Covent Garden House, my two- j
thousandth part of the Marchesa's big fee, if I knew she
would sing the ' Last Rose,' and hoped she would, when
encored, sing ' Flowers of the Forest ' or ' Came ye from
AthoL' The Patti is probably a ' natural monopoly '
now, just as Jenny Lind was once. If the moon were
only just invented, and Gye got her for a season, many
j:)eople would pay a crown for a peep at her. What
I regret is rather that a Barnum or that sort of a fellow
should get huge profits for letting out his monopolized
l^itti or Sarah Bernhardt, than that the woman herself
shoukl get a lot of money ; but then philosophy tells me
that Barnum's gains only mean a sort of swallowing up
of all that the would-be Barnums have lost : this must
ever be. The illustrious (juack just dead, for whose
cenotaph his admirers are sending round a hat with
indifterent success, absorbs in his eight or ten years of
[)rosperity all the losses of some scores of Charles BuUers,

I

i88i] TENNYSON. RECENT HISTORY 475

Durhams, Horsmans, Broughams, O'Connells, Edwin
Jameses, &c., &c., the pushing men who failed. In diis
there is not a natural monopoly; it is intellii^ible; it is
a thinrr that philosophers accept with a smile ; it is not
like the prosperity of Alillais, Sims Reeves, or Jenny Lind,
the fruit of unique g-rowth or ' natural monoj)oly.'

It is Q-loriously courageous of Tennyson to persevere
in makino- plays, but if it is to be about Becket I shall
be surprised if it turns out interesting. English middle-
age history is what all history has been called, an en-
chainci7teiit de soitises et d'atrocites. It astonishes me
that men do not perceive how much greater our age
is than other ages; that splendid character the tutor,
in Les Rots en Exil, could not be conceived as existing
in any other time. There is any amount of pure tragedy
in Charlottes pleading with Louis Napoleon for the
rescue of Maximilian, and Louis Napoleon's misery in not
being so far master of France as to save his protege.

The struggle for and against slavery in Kansas in 1857
is an entirely neglected bit of heroic war. Manin in 1 849
is sublime. The passions of 1870 have engendered a
beautiful drama — Une Fille de Rolajid — a book I give
to girls. The passions of the Poles represented in
Ladislas Bolski, of the Italians as in the history of the
Bandiera and the Cairoli family, are w^orthy of holy poets.
It is deplorable to think of Tennyson's being ignorant
of all these things, and supplied from hand to mouth
by Freeman and Froude, who go a-scavenging in dark
and mean regions.

Nothing to me is more ghastly or sickening than to see
!in a list of papers printed in a magazine a paper on the
: topic ^ which you say is handled also in the Times.

'V ^ Eternal punishment.

476 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

It is a thing which people think about, and if they cease
opportunely to think about it, they escape madness;
but madness is, as far as I can judge from my own
experience, the only proper result of contemplating
infinity of time or of space.

(i) The Supreme Being whom reasoners worship is
one altogether devoid of the sense or the condition or
(as they used to say Kantically) the intuition of time.
It is a contradiction in terms to speak of God as ' fore *
knowing, ' fore ' ordaining ; ' the future,' ' the past ' are
to the God whom we adore alien, incongruous, impossible
ideas. (2) The language of the New Testament is
stamped with the incapacity or rudimentariness of
Ptolemaic people. Ever since Copernicus said, and
his followers in the seventeenth century proved, that
the Universe is incalculably greater than our planetary
system, men who are allowed to harmonize their thoughts,
men who are not cramped or bribed by, or benumbed
by, professional tenets, conceive of infinity of time as
they do of infinity of space, and they feel that the
aliavLa of the Ptolemaic people are but a lot of cycles
just about as big as the lot of spheres of the Ptolemaic
astronomy.

Habbage's book, the ninth Bridgewater Treatise^ sets
forth finally the immensely expanded conception of the
Creator which science had fifty years ago enabled him
and people like him to form. To such thinkers the
language of the Apostles seems childish when they
speak of the Judgement and the everlasting consequences
thereof; I mean that the apostolic writers seem to the
philosophers to use big words without at all knowing
how big they are. (3) To the modern moralist. Dives
caring for his poor brothers is dearer than Lazarus lying

t88i] ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 477

at his ease and not pitying Dives ; a enjoying

bliss while he knows that a is tortured is less

venerable or enviable than Prometheus. (4) Imagine

a man of 's intellect being alive on earth at the

second advent, and standing up to hear his sentence.
He goes mad as a matter of course. . . (5) Philosophical
Christians have held that without any fiat of the Supreme
Being a man of evil habits would be plagued as long as
he lived, indefinitely or infinitely, by the inability to
satisfy or divert his mind from his evil inclinations.
Another view that has occurred to sentimental people,
not quite philosophical, is that however impious or sinful
a man may be he retains affeciiojis^ and as long as his
identity subsists he must love some one ; that no sentence,
no torture, could deprive him of this loving power. Such
a man says, As long as I am I, it is necessary that I feel
love; no vice has quenched love in my heart, no pain
can ever quench it. (6) As far as I have been able to
observe. Englishmen w^ho become Catholics, w^hether
I adhering openly to the Pope or not, substitute purgatory
for the Calvin hell, and I believe this is the most solid,
sensible reason they have for their conversion. The
religion which actually prevails with the sweet-hearted
women, as far as I know, and w^hich also seems to me
■ teachable, if one avoids promiscuous reading of theology,
if one sticks to Hymns, Te Deums, and * Imitations,' is
a habit of conforming to the fatherhood, the tranquillity,
the simplicity of that image of God which we call Christ.
It Is inevitably coloured with all sorts of anthropomorphic
reflections, and therefore the philosopher must worship
in one court and his wife in another ; but there is an
effective sympathy between the two, and the exercise
of the affections, v.'ith the discharge of regular duties,

478 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

saves both the worshippers from the agony of thinking :
about infinity. I shall do no more than just give you 1 1
these aids to reflection. The contemplation of the endless
suffering of any one man, even Rush, is, I am sure,
enough to make a man of imagination go mad.

In a really religious book, in Thomas a Kempis par- i [
ticularly, I do not observe that the terrors are much
dwelt upon.

To H. O. Sttirgis.

Madeira, July 22, 1881.

I have read all there was in magazines about Carlyle ;
the usual crudities and heartburns of the Britons. My
dominant feeling is that people make altogether too
much of literature, of voluminous unrestrained ad libiittiit
writers. Carlyle wrote seasonably and thoughtfully
about fifty years ago about Sam Johnson, Voltaire, Scott,
and Burns. He made us, the young people, in 1839-43,
wholesomely antagonistic to the hard frivolity of our
conspicuous gentry ; but he never was half so good as
his contemporaries, Fowell Buxton, Thomas Drummond,
Charles Metcalfe, &c., &c. No book of his has done
so much good as Keble's Christian Year^ Stanley s Life
of Arnold^ Hannah's IJfe of Chalmers^ &c., &c., &c.

He was substantially an ass to go on flattering a lot of
Germans, and to take no heed of Garrison, l^^lisha Kane,
Henry Lawrence, Chinese Gordon, Livingstone, Daniele
Manin, &c., &c., &c. . .

I was asked here in March whether he was a good
historian. I said, ' No; he knew nothing, refused to know
anything, of law and economy ; and therefore he could
not understand the conduct of alTairs, the texture of

,88il CARLYLE 479

business ; therefore he could not take the measure of a
nation or a period.' . .

A nation is a tissue of fimilies, and is sounder if sons
inherit character, as I hope Robert Lincoln does. It is
to be regretted that their best men, such as Alexander
Hamilton, are not represented in politics by descendants.
What their clever men, such as Evarts, do not seem to
learn like the Europeans, is the moral art of assigning-
what is due to this or that person or people. The
gospel, ' Honour all men,' is understood better by Glad-
stone and Granville than by the Blaines and Fiskes.

To Rev. E. D. Stone,

August 3, i!

All night I heard the beautiful kelarooz^ of the conduit
just below my window going through our ground ; we
were watered yesterday. I rejoiced in letting my seven
ducks out to revel in the pools of stolen water ; for the
conduit leaked a little on to our raised grass-plot. I had
to keep guard, for fear the bold drake should lead the
squadron through my wire net, which is rather broad —
meant for kangaroos ; for if they got through the wire
into the conduit, they would be swept down a w^ooden
shoot and drowned — odd for a big duck to be drowned.
One night we had a foolish rat at the foot of the wooden
shoot, jumping up to keep his head out of the cataract
or rapid below. I had to rescue him by taking away
a stone below. It is the only instance on record of
humanity towards a rat. I believe he is now fattening
on my grapes. We have one lizard ; he lives in an oak

, * Theocr. Idyll, vii. 136 : —

480 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

trunk ; we call him Juvenal. Tommy the cat, who
walks about with the nurse like a dog, keeps down both
these races which eat grapes ; but if Tom were to eat
many lizards he would, they say, get thin. This I believe
to be held because lizards look thin ; * who eats thin
reptiles must himself be thin.' Have you heard that the
frog has been promoted ? He is no longer a reptile.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Madeira, August 3, 1881.

I wrote of Stanley last week to this effect : he is one ,
of the few men that I should have named for the British
Forty if Albert or Peel had in wisdom founded a British
Academy. I doubt whether any man in modern times
has for thirty-six years maintained in a series of books
and papers such correct elegance as Stanley ; I wrote
to some one else that no book of Carlyle s had done as
much good as Stanley's Life of Ar7iold. But I have
not myself read a fifth or a seventh of his publications.
If the Academy had been founded — say in 1845 — Hallam
would have been first in it. Merivale, Thirlwall, Mill,
Macaulay, Tennyson, Col. Mure perhaps, Matt. Arnold,
Maine, Seeley, Lecky perhaps, G. Eliot, T. H. Burton,
C}rote ; not Thackeray, not Dickens, not Bulwer, not
l^'roude, not Ruskin, not Lord vStanhope, unless indeed,
as I think, Froude or Ruskin had been saved from error
by the attraction and pressure of the Academy. Swin-
burne, Houghton, and Argyle would have taken pains
to earn the precarious honour, and perhaps would havci
got it without taking quite enough pains. Mihnan would
perhaps have been inevitable ; Mozlcy would have had
a good chance. It would have snubbed Manning and

I

Feb. i88a] ACADEMY OF LETTERS 481

Newman. Henry Taylor would have had a shave for
it. I am supposing- it to take its pitch (as you say in
tuning) from Hallam. Jowctt and Henry vSidgwick,
Venn, Cairnes (your Dublin friend), and many more
would have crowded in as competitors. . .

It is remarkable that the House of Commons has not
for a hundred years made a serious mistake in choosing
its President, though there have been some Speakers
less efficient than others. In the Dominion there has
been a process of selection and probation which has given
some solid permanent men of some dignity, such as Tilly
of Nova Scotia.

To Capt. A. H. Druinmond.

Jan. 1882.

... It is clear that Gladstone, like his predecessor, thrives
on the short memories and xh^fait accompli thinking
of the Londoners. Before Parliament can get to w ork
at a critical examination of Frere's, Kimberley's, Lytton's,
or Salisbury's misdeeds, the Londoners are quite tired
of the topic. They gorge themselves with telegrams for
a month, and then refuse to look at anything printed on
the topic. There never was an age in which ministers
were so free to do as they like in foreign and colonial
things. . .

To Miss Mary Coleridge.

Madeira, Feb. i, i88a.

Spring I perceive in two or three periods and places
as the age of Herodotus in Ionic lands, the age of the
pointed arch and wTitten music and Franciscan zeal in
Western Europe in the thirteenth century ; the later
Jyears of Albert Diirer in Germany ; the French period,

I i

482 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

1814 to 1834 or thereabouts — the period of early Ruskin,
Charlotte Bronte, and Mrs. Gaskell in England. . .

If there ever was a time in Western Europe (including
Spain, Germany, and Italy) when the world seemed to
be coming to an end for want of strength to resist decay,
it was, I think, the time when Manon Lescatit was
published ; but the truth is that literature may be sickly
and frivolous when there are thousands of juicy men and
women in the nation and lively enterprises on foot.

But you were born in a great age, when great things
were attempted and even accomplished. (Edward III
was a sickly duffer when Chaucer was looking about
for sense for verses.) I can't remember in all Froissart
more than one bit of fresh nature, that is Jeanne de
Montfort's kissing the English soldiers who rescued her
castle and children. . .

Poets do not seem in truth to live poetically ; that
is, it does not appear that he who has shown himself
a master of the art is in character a poetical object for
others to contemplate. I am glad we know hardly
anything of Virgil. . . In my time there has been
genuine poet whose life was one gem — he was called
Mackvvorth Dolben ; he died at your age. Arndt seems
to have lived a long life of enthusiasm and patriotism
after composing genuine Tyrtaean song. Christina
Rossetti seems to live in exact conformity with her
poetry. Keble probably did so. But the lives which
are poetical objects arc the lives of men who did not
make venses (unless David wrote the Psalms). Read
thou modern biographies. Believe not one-tenth of the
rhapsodies delivered to you in lectures by Scotsmen, or
l)y contributors to the series of school-books, when they
discourse about their favourite authors.

i88fl] POETS. CHIVALRY. TENNYSON 483

Hold stcadf'istly that the a^es of chivalry, &c., were
miserable times — especially in Itnc^land — compared with
the best ai^es of Palestine, Greece, Rome, Florence,
modern l^ngland, very modern Italy, and Greece. Luck-
now is to Agincourt what Arcturus is to Neptune or
Uranus.

To A . D. Coleridge,

Aprils, 1882.

I am sure Scarlett, if alive, would not value the lines '
which his widow values. I remember in 1846, when he
fed me at York, and showed me the three hundred horses
of the 5th D. G., how he mocked Napier's famous Albuera
rhapsody, w^hich, with gems from Badajoz, Salamanca,
Maya, and Nivelle, will, I think, outlive these canterings
of the Hea\y Brigade. I remember Scarlett and Elhot
coming to inspect the Eton College Volunteers. Their
commander had to stand and receive the final bene-
diction, and he reported to me, ' I don't know what he
said to me ; I could not listen for looking at the scars on
his face.' Now this is a bit of nature worth remembering.

I delight in Tennyson's w^orks, even his failures, even
his gilded mediocrities ; there is sure to be a touch or
two beyond the art of other men — in that heavy song
I like the phrase about England's ' fear of being great.'
It is now exactly forty years since Tennyson has been
to me the light and charm of my poor life. . .

I judge a ministry as the wise French judge a play,

I when acted without that exclusive contemplation of the

first actor or actress, which is the foible of most of us

uneducated people, even when we have been trained in

logic or even in law. It is the worship of the solo

' Tennyson's ' Charge of the Heavy Brigade.'
I i 2

484 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

or the sola that spoils the sacred hopes of musical
culture ; your festivals and concerts are ruined by the
pampering of the inevitable natural monopolists, a Sims
or a Christine. The music, which is to be the one
permanent comfort of sick mortals, is like the rowing
in an eight or the fielding of an eleven.

To Sir F. Pollock.

May 5, 1882.

. . . Sensibility seems to increase as I get older, but the
head gets weaker. I try in vain to learn a little botany,
or to master Helmholtz's Lectures. I have gone half
through Renan's Marc-Aurele^ which was sent me by
a friend. I keep it for the hot months, when I shall
be up nearer the clouds, further from things readable,
and hard up for time-killing occupation. My bad memory
makes me less poor, since I can go over the few books
I possess with a fair sense of discovery ; this is par-
ticularly the case with French plays ; they come back
year after year as new to me as I wish. . .

The death of Darwin seems to be taken as a natural
fall of leaf or fruit.

Nothing ever was so quaintly tragic as his funeral :
a noble host of Sadducees sitting to listen to that
anastasian argument about two kinds of bodies ; nine-
tenths of them remembering some other funerals of
parents or of sisters at which they listened to the Pauline
trumpet, and felt it just as their sisters and mothers felt
it. In this host of sad elders who honour Darwin for
convincing them of their mortality there are the ' tribunes^
of the women,' the V . Farrars, &c. The Germans and
the }^>ench must think that Abbey ceremony a splendid

i882] DARWIN'S DEATH AND FUNERAL 485

specimen of English insincerity. Huxley in vain tries
to substitute something for the anastasian poetry ; his
necromancy with the Apologia Socratis is futile. I like
Gold win vSmith s grave protest against the attempt to
fill the void. It is curious that if we were to try to bury
a friend affectionately, we must, if we speak at all over
his grave, use some word or other that points to the
forfeited creed, some ' farewell,' some * adieu.'

To Sir F. Pollock.

July 8, 1882.

The Spencerian teleology, the doctrine that la maudile
espece (as Frederick the Great called humanity) is to be
kept up, seems to me not at all more ' scientific ' than
the first dogma of the Scottish catechism, that man was
created to glorify God. . .

It seems to me that religious people, whether Christians
or Unitarians (=: Deists), are different in morals from
good Spencerians, more compassionate, more placable.

I had rather faU into the hands of such a man as the
late Lord Hatherley, or the late Bishop Hamilton of
Salisbury, than of even the late Charles Darwin.

To Rev. E. D. Slone.

25 Cannon Place, Hampstead,

Oct. 4, 1882.

Apart from commerce, what is German ?

1. It is used by subsoil research men. Therefore if
you want to be a Gardiner, a Brewer, a Murray, even
a Seeley, you do well to learn German. . .

2. The literature is now second-rate — the German
novelist is below the Russian. Faust is the only thing

486 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

that ever^^body reads, and it is as old as Nestor was
at Troy.

3. It seems to be alive on the stage, I admit ; and if
you go to Germany and want to go to theatres, you
want familiarity with the language. Their acting seems
to be much better in our day, relatively to France and
England, than it was formerly ; but, after all, Germany
will be known hereafter for nothing special, save music. !
Our enjoyment of German music is unforced ; our enjoy-
ment of German poetry is a sort of cheese after six
courses ; our enjoyment of German prose is mere

I scout and hiss the notion of German being equivalent
to Greek because of its copiousness, or because of its
making the student use every muscle of the mind by
compelling him to deal with varieties of style. Greek
is not commensurate with German, because it contains
about twenty several kinds of style or method, whilst
in German there is only the difference between childishly
simple verse structure and monstrously clumsy prose
structure. . .

A little study of German opens one's eyes to the
possible evolutions from the Saxon, or Moeso-Gothic,
or Icelandic, or primary Teuton. It is at least amusing,
and I think comforting, to observe the divergence of
our conquered from their unconquered nation ; to think
what we escaped, when they fell under the yoke of the
Luther structure of the prose sentence, when we got rid
of the inflection that marks the infinitive, the penance of
gender, the gargle of gutturals, the piecing of a French
word on -j'ren ; from ' ein ganz aimabler Cavalier/
&c., &r.

i88a] GERMAN LITERATURE. BR ACTON 487
1^0 Sir F. I^ollock.

CUDOKSDON VlCARAGK. Oct. 14, 1882.

On the face of it, the passajrc (|uotcd from Bracton
seems to show that he felt that the king was not actually
obedient to the law, for if the king were actually
obedient to the law, it would not be worth his while to
assert that in theory he was under the law. With any
one less acute than yourself I would work out this
argument. I trust you a deini-inot\ only venturing to
remind you how Louis Hutin, King of France, pro-
claimed to his subjects that ' all men were equal ' ; and
that nothing is more common than for people to say
a thing • is ' when they mean ' ought to be.'

I am quite aware that such a man as Edw^ard the First
knew^ very well what law meant, and used it and accepted
it as a limit ; but at the same time I believe that he was
not controlled by ' the spirit of the law ^ ' as much as
Tiberius was ; he had not got back to that atmospheric
pressure of legality which was felt by cool-headed
Romans for many hundred years. As to the other
kings of England before William and Mary, I hold the
plain old-fashioned doctrines: (i) that the strong charac-
ters had, compared with contemporary sovereigns, great
ascendency over [a) the Church, which was the constant
and most formidable adversary, (b) the judges, [c] the
barons, {d) the towns, whereas [e) the weak men, such
as Henry III, Edward II, Richard II, tested the theon,'
of the monarchy so far that it broke down, and that an
Anne, or a George I, or George IV, or a William I\'
must have been an impossible sovereign, but for the

' Note by the writer: • There is a classical passage of S. T. Coleridge
about this phrase."

t

88 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

establishment of the law's certain action, which may
be correctly enough dated from the overthrow of James
the Dispenser.

(2) That the first monarch of England that was fairly
argued with was Charles I.

N. B. I knew and taught, before you were born, the
Guizot-Hallam-Dahlmann lessons about the Selden-Pym
argument from antiquity against prerogative: — only I
persist in holding that as long as members of Parliament
had to argue in that way, so long the prerogative did
actually tower above the precedents of right.

(3) That up to the time of Henry VIII statutes for
the most part were of the nature of treaties between
the powers that were on the see-saw. That Henry VIII
was, speaking roughly, the first ruler who governed
in great measure by means of enactments, instantly and
speedily executed. That conjirinatioiis of charters
were evidently signs of the failure of charters and of
incessant ebbings of popular right.

(4) That the strong-charactered monarchs were re-
strained in the Middle Ages, not as the strong Georges II
and III were, by the spirit of the law, but by custom
and by the fear of violence.

(5) That we owe our rights or liberties in great
measure to the necessities of the Tudors and the Stuarts,
when they had to play some part In the European
competition.

It is taught In the books that I used to read when I,
like others of my age, looked on the Middle Ages with
poetical yearnings for cHscovery of treasures, that the
necessities of Edward III secured the liberties of the
Commons. It seems to me that they did actually
furnish excellent precedents for Pym and tlie adversaries

i88a] CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 489

of Charles I. lUit they did not secure the people
ag^ainst such kin^s as l^dward IV and Henry VII, who
had no foreicrn policy that forced them to make any
important overtures of concession to the Commons.

vSo much for the balance of power between King and
Parliament.

But I should like to ask you whether you have not
been, like most men of our day, inclined to over-estimate
the researches of Stubbs and the importance of the
transactions of kts centuries as compared with the tenth
and the seventeenth.

I am not a wise man nor a man of research, but
I conscientiously believe myself to be wiser about the
relative importance of affairs in different ages of English
or British history than the new Oxford school. I appeal
to Hallam against the modern Oxonians. Look at his
Middle Ages : see how much space he gives to his own
country. It is no doubt much more than a Frenchman,
an Italian, a Russian, or a Japanese would give ; but it
is not so much as to prevent one's seeing that he found
the types of the characteristic Middle-Age affairs more
in Germany, Italy, and France than in Britain.

Feudality is characteristic of Middle-Age Europe.
Hallam, if now aHve, would, I am sure, agree with Guizot
in thinking that it should be studied in France and in
the book of the Constitution of the kingdom of Jerusalem
founded by the Crusaders.

The struggle between Pope and Emperor is charac-
teristic of Middle-Age Europe. Study it, we say, not
in the land of the Plantagenets, but in the land of the
Hohenstaufen.

The formation of orders, ^ brotherhoods, and other
devices connected with the Church is a third character-

490 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

istic ; for this we go rather to Assisi than to the county
of the Gilbertines, i. e. Lincolnshire.

Municipality restored is a fourth ; for this we go to
Flanders and Tuscany, not to London or Exeter or any
British town.

Of course I admit that to you, a lawyer bent upon
doing what you can for your own law system, all sorts
of things, such as Bracton's opinions, are very important ;
but I professed to write for young men of all nations —
Japan, India, Australia, Zanzibar — and I thought it good
policy to use hard sayings, explosive bits of slapdash, to
begin the fight with the Oxonians, who have now got
hold of the Civil Service Commissioners and Examiners,
and are forcing all the admirers and clients of England
to get up details of English (not British, for they slight
vScotland) archaeology (not practical history) — details
which professors of history' in neutral places like Geneva
would, I believe, neglect.

Now that I am at you, I take the opportunity of
warning you against the tendency of your political
philosophy. I perceive that you, following Maine, are
giving up your right, inherited from Socrates, to ask
at every turn, ' Why do you, O young man, think it
right or wrong to do so-and-so?' The tendency was
pointed out by Maine's first reviewer in the Edi}}biirgh
Review^ in an artick^ which you perhaps have never

seen.

To- Sir F. Pollock.

Middle Ages cjuite non-political.

This may be true and worth saying, if you mean
that there were in the Mi(klle Ages, from A. I). looo
to A. I). i4(S() or thereabouts, no men able to reflect on
|)henomena of citizenship, of government, of adminis-

I i88aj MIDDLE AGES 491

tration, of state formation, &c., &c. ; but not at all true
if it is meant that thosc^ times are badly supplicfl with
such phenomena. In the histories that people read
thirty or forty years ag-o, Sismondi, Hallam, Guizot,
Thierry, &c., there are (i) French Communes asserting^
liberties ; (2) French lawyers assertlnor royal prerogative,
partly on deductions from Roman precedents ; (3) vSwiss
Cantons ; (4) Florentine parties similar to Greek demo-
cracies and aristocracies ; (5) leagues of cities In Lom-
bard}^ and elsewhere ; (6) Ghent against Count of
Flanders ; (7) federation of land-holding monasteries
in Scotland; (8) Perth municipality [apud Walter vScott's
Fair Maid) ; (9) Venetian statecraft and complexities of
organization ; (10) genesis of Admiralty Law In the
Mediterranean; (11) growth of urban rights or liberties
in Spain (afterwards suppressed in the early modern
period); (12) elaborate construction of the Kingdom of
Jerusalem with its code of feudal law ; (13) various things
in Sweden well worth reading about, apud Geiger, a
very clever worker of history and political philosophy :
&c., &c. ; and I would in particular ask you to look to
Adam Smith's chapter on the Growth of Towns, which
I believe to be more like a ' scientific ' discourse than
anything in Burke. . .

It is a serious omission in 3^our view" of the Middle
Ages that you neglect Guizot 's view about the very
general striving of people to get power legitimated. He
says, if I remember right (all this is faint recollection of
things read and taught thirty years ago), that they went
to the Pope as the only visible authority that could
legitimate power. Perhaps your attention Is drawn from
this by the ascendency of Bryce and Freeman, who see
the Empire everywhere, the Papacy only as its foil.

492 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

To Sir F. Pollock.

Dec. 1 8, 1882.

I wish you may avoid what I am sure is the error of
glorifying the pre-rational times as regards law. You
can have no proper bias that way ; it can be only that
you are bitten by Maine. Genius as he is, he is not,
never was, a broadly wise man. His book on Ancient
Law is entirely superior in philosophy to his lectures
on the Brehon laws ; in the one he does not, in the
other he does, make pets of phenomena which are patho-
logical : of the nature of mental disease, not pure child-
hood things, but things of imbecility — dotage.

Fellows like Bracton are at the mercy of little chance
idols. They pick up ' good words ' and pot them, some-
thing like the people in Charlemagne's age, who picked
up bits of classical sculpture and stuck them into Char-
lemagne's monument and into Church fonts and pillars,
&c., or those who took precious stones from classical
jewellery and stuck them into the wooden bindings of
Church books, or took a Roman bust in intaglio and
cut the skull so as to give the semblance of tonsure, that
it might become the signet of a priest.

It is apparent that Bracton took a bit of Justinian at
second or tenth hand, and stuck it with blind reverence
and vanity into his conglomerate.

It is as certain as anything in history, that as late as
the reign of Henry VII, at least, the head men of the
Court and the Crown's service gloated in a barbarous
way on a higglc-piggledy of privileges, exactions,
exemptions, &c., &c., &c., with no conception of such
acqiiahili/as as one finds in Cicero.

Really it is not worth your while to brood over the
f intastic curiosities of 1^2nglish archaeology. You say

i88a] MIDDLE AGES 493

the Germans ^oxy in it ; no doubt. To them, since they
have only beg^un to be a compact state and a vivacious
nation in the last twenty years, it is not wholly unnatural
to make a q^ood deal of the collateral connexion with
Eno^Iand. They have for their study of l^Lng-lish customs
and methods a motive analogous to that which makes
them such minute students of Shakespeare.

But can they make the Middle Ages of England inter-
estinof to Italians or Frenchmen ? Do the Hun^farians,
who are known to be disciples of our Whigs, care to
go back to 1^2nglish history earlier than Henry VIII .-*
I say Henry VIII rather than Charles II, because in
Henr}^ s reign there certainly was, as Macaulay teaches,
a balance of royal will and parliamentary (or people's)
will ; in other words, the king was sensible enough to
know that he was limited by the resistance of the people,
expressed either in insurrection or in parliamentary
remonstrance. Surely he is the first Englishman that
we can recognize as really intelligent, capable of seeing
round a thing.

I am far from saying that the Middle Ages are not
worth some study from some students ; but the best of
their life is that which you do not contemplate, their
episcopacy, their Franciscan missions, Salisbury and
Westminster architecture, written tunes, popular poetry,
ambitious seafaring, methodical agriculture such as was
promoted by monasteries in alliance (as Dryburgh,
Melrose, Jedburgh — I think these are the three who
helped each other in the Lowlands), subscription bridges
as at Bideford, William Wykeham's Colleges, Alerton
colony at Cambridge, &c., &c.

If you have access to Robert Phillimore's Private Lazu
of the Romans (Macmillan), look at his introduction ; it

494 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

contains a long paragraph of amusing invective against
the Middle Ages generally. I do not echo it. I revere
Anselm, St. Francis, Thomas a Kempis, Heloise, &c.,
Maid of Orleans, Giotto, Raymond Lull, &c., but I
despise the Crusaders, the Armagnacs and Burgundians ;
and I am quite sure that whatever Sir John Fortescue
may have said, he and his compatriots were far below
Philip de Commines in the enjoyment of mental pro-
cesses ; in short, England was a backward country, for
Europe, till the days of Henry VIII. I should like,
were it possible, to study the history of our adminis-
tration from his accession. But I expect to find no
rational lawyer for the two hundred years after it.

To Sir F. Pollock.

April g, 1884.

Feudalism. The typical feudal levy, so far as I re-
member (and I have no books here), is Edward I's
march to the siege of Caerlaverock [an interesting
exception to a rule here. Holderness, a region, asked
for ' exceptio ' or immunity, implying that there was
a recognized general liability to military service]. It
seems to me probable that l^dward, though in a legal
position far firmer than the Concjueror (because by
Edward s time the evolutional things had been reduced
to feudal law by the perseverance of Norman lawyers,
reviving in a variant form the skill of Romans), did
nevertheless summon his barons to the invasion of Scot-
land with the same sort of attraction as the Conqueror
had for the nobles of Normandy when he started for
luigland — the attraction of adventure and hoj^e of occu«
pancy, not very different, in its effect on rural rufhans
sufiering from ennui, from the attraction of the Crusades,

1884] FEUDALISM 495

not very different from the attraction that a Tiniour or
a Mahdi holds out in lands that never knew the art of
subinfeudation.

Whatever may have been discovered by Stubbs, I
cannot forj^et what we learnt long ago from Guizot,
that feudalism grew up in the age after Charlemagne,
when the French countries fell away from Charlemagne's
systematic order into a dull scramble ; when roads were
neglected, towns isolated, castles set up, huts gathered
under castles, retinues of idle ruffians formed to gratify
vanity and use up such wealth as the castle owners had,
and kings, conscious of weakness, winked at the usurpa-
tion of jurisdiction and of the power of granting this
or that to inferiors without any legitimation but the
mark of the castle owner's thumb-nail or signet ring ;
and then, when the subtle vSugdens of the Normans and
their imitators came into the service or into the alliance
of the kings, and the senseless quarrels of the castle
owners laid them open to more and more interference,
the connivance was disguised in all manner of grants,
and the transfer of power from father to child was
cramped and charged by various rules.

But I doubt whether even Edward I could or did get

military serv^ice out of the castle owners without either

paying or at least provisioning their men at arms, or

holding out hopes of fresh grants at the expense of

r conquered \\'elsh or Scots. I believe the conquest of

' Glamorganshire to have been in a rough way similar

to many an Oriental conquest, and the association of

\ Norman -English to have been precarious, occasional,

|, varying in strength with the correlative associations of

clans that were not Norman-English.

There are hardly any muster-rolls, I believe, of armed

496 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

men following an English king before Agincourt ; but
as in that campaign, so probably in every earlier cam-
paign, there was a lot of money wasted, besides the
obligation to follow ; and the pith of a feudal army was in
the troop of servants always or almost always hanging
about the lord's courtyard, not in his tenants.

To Sir F. Pollock.

Jan. 1 6, 1883.

. . . Though a conscious sciolist on all subjects
(though some say no one can be consciously a sciolist),
I am sure I know something about the trick of teaching
young people ; for there was a time, about fourteen
years ago, when I kept a class of about twenty lads, all
intelligent, none very clever, steadily interested for
many hours, spread over a year or more, in Plato ; and
I account for my success partly by making it a rule to
put into every lecture and every question paper a mixture
of things abstract and things concrete, of things hard
and things easy, of things dry and things juicy. I did
the same with the far easier business of teaching that
useful but narrow thing, political economy ; and I am
quite sure that if you are to have a class at Oxford,
you will do well to make every lecture resemble a
symphony in change of movement or a dinner in change
of solidity : every one says that Austin as a lecturer is
a caution, and some people feel that living teachers err
in uniformity of treatment. . .

If I were in your place I would have no solemn

Inaugural, but begin by analysing some case reported

in Ceylon or the Cape Colony, where there is Roman law

jumbled with r>nglish law or smothered by local custom,

or anyhow requiring to be pulled out and exhibited.

1883] LECTURING. STUDY OF FRENCH 497

This would from the first interest the two or three
intellioent lads that would be sitting before you and
wishing to sit often ; these lads, you may be sure, will
have forestalled, in their casual reading, enough of your
philosophy to be impatient if they see that you are
keeping them on tlie threshold. I hope, but I do not
expect, that you will find at Oxford as many good
listeners as I had at l>ton in 1870.

To A. D. Coleridge.

March 27, 1883.

My opinion is clearly worthless, since I wholly dissent,
and have always dissented, from the fashionable opinions
about Thackeray, R. Browning, and Dante, and I firmly
refuse to think Shakespeare a better playwTight than
Sardou. Besides this, I have for years past had a steady
dislike of the London -American talk or writing about
literature ; I feel that it is overrated as compared with
music, painting, statesmanship, law, and science ; and
I am bored vrith the incessant publication of articles and
little books about authors, and the mutual flatteries of
the people employed by publishers and newspaper
people. As to a young lady's training in taste and
reasoning, I have a steadily fixed opinion that she ought
to work hard for some years at careful elegant transla-
tion of modern French books, such as Cherbuliez (say,
for instance, his little volume called Grand CEuvre) ;
I mean translation for improvement of one's own mind,
not to please a bookseller. After a long course of this
work, which is of the nature of orthodox classical study,
a lady w^ould do some little service to mankind by trans-
lating for the press the modern German books of
political history and biography. . .

Kk

498 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [April

I am quite sure that literary English ladies are not
acquainted with the English language as English classical
scholars are, and never will be as long as they treat
French merely as an obj'et de Itixe^ and German merely
as an accomplishment purchased for ^^300 in the teens
and dropt as soon as they go to their first balls. English
scholars, academical chiefly, know their own language
in a great measure through their attempts at rendering
Cicero, Aristotle, Virgil, Aeschylus, &c., into English ;
also through their subsequent critical study and obser-
vation of the phenomena that present themselves to them
in their idle reading of modern French books, papers,
reviews; and through critical reflection on the things
that strike them in a Times article, &c., things con-
structed almost always by scholars.

To A. D. Coleridge.

April 1 6, 1883.

The enjoyable modern literature of England begins
with Hohe7ilindeii and Kenilworth. Even since the
two Scotsmen taught us how to move in narration we
keep on relapsing into the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth century jog-trot. We do ; the French
do not. . .

1 cannot read Spenser, except as I can listen to an
archdeacon's sermon. It is a task. I am very glad
that I did know the Faerie Qiieene as a child and since ;
but it is all through devoid of the real charm of literature,
the charm of frecjuent surprise without jarring. . . In
every stanza 1 feel that I am on the brink of the in-
evitable, just as in old-fashioned singing one used to get
ready for the Hraham shake or bleat.

Tennyson is the sum and product of the art that

.;;;; J ART OF NARRATION. TENNYSON 499

bepran with Homer. I cannot say that he is greater than
Homer; but he fills my soul, and makes the best part of
the forty years of manhood that I have gone through.
Spenser is ' in the succession,' and I honour him. . .

To A. D. Coleridge.

KiNGSwooD Cottage, Shottermill, Surrey,

Au^. 31, 1884.

. . . As to Hartley, I am through life haunted by a few
of his little poems. Haslemere is to me more honourable
than any Westmoreland mere, for it is the post tovv^n of
him whose house was * built of music' I have been as
near as I dare to that house.

To H. W. Paul.

April 2.0^ 1883.

Randolph hit the nail on the head in saying that the
Na\y had a right to a big prize, and would be the better
for the encouragement. The fact is worth remarking,
that Lyons was the only sailor made a peer for about
seventy years till Alcester arose. Lord de Saumarez
was made a peer long after he had ceased from work.
Strathnairn, Sandhurst, &c., were, it is said in the debate,
made peers for general services. Now in the Navy there
was a Sir William Parker, whose general services were
more considerable than theirs, i. e. in keeping the peace
and maintaining the country's authority at Lisbon and
in the Mediterranean. The Navy gets very few chances
of distinction, although it does work requiring far more
vigilance and intellect than the Army. Therefore, when
by luck there comes an affair like Acre, Algiers, Alex-
andria, it is quite right to make the most of it, just to
encourag"e the Service.

K k 2

500 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July

To Sir F. Pollock.

July 17, 1883.

In boring you last time I forgot to notice the very-
interesting bit of your lecture as to the Greek's way of
looking at the Roman, and his utter neglect of Latin
literature.

There may be some one (say Wayte) who has read
all Strabo, Plutarch, Lucian ; I have read Longinus^,
which is no great job — the others would weary me : to
establish your important negative, one would have to
look through many volumes.

I once read Cleineniis Alexandrini Stromata ; I think
there was nothing about Latin books in them.

Query ; Josephus } Philo Judaeus } Merivale, of course,
knows them all through.

The neglect of Latin by Greeks is historically im-
portant, in so far as it has to do with the remarkable
duality of the Church even in its best age, the lifetime
of Jerome ; still more after the division of the Empire.
1 suppose if the Eastern Byzantines, &c., had read
Augustine they would not have been such mummies ;
nor would Russia be so miserable even now.

It seemed to do the old Greeks no harm to be so
content with their own language, but it has probably
been bad for the Christian Greeks,

Similarly, is it not now a very bad thing for the French
to be so much absorbed in the study of French ? . .

To H. W. Paul.

August 34, 1883.

I have about five volumes of Sainte-Rcuve's Caiiscrics
ready for you, with a considerable number of pencil

* W. J. road Longinus before he went up to Cambridge in 184a.

1883] GREEKS AND LATIN. SAINTE-BEUVE 501

marks. There used to be some one in the Saturday
Rcvie2V that knew and touted Sainte-Beuve, and I am
grateful to that Saturday Reviewer, for Sainte-Beuve has
kept me from putrefying- now two years ; he surfeits us
with certain names, such as Fenelon, Chateaubriand,
Bossuct, the softer heads of France, whom you need not
dwell upon ; but he is amazingly judicious, far more
profound than Macaulay, and not so omnivorous, not so
easily pleased with books. But the great reason why
I ask you to read the Ltindis is that I think you
cannot otherwise form a conception of the importance
of the French stock of thoughts, relatively to the British.

To H. W, Paul.

Cannon Hall Road, Oct. 6, 1883.

I think we ought to try to get more reform of House
of Commons: (i) simultaneous elections; (2) triennial
Parliaments; (3) no prorogation — one long session, with
adjournment ; (4) strict limits of question-time ; (5) re-
newal of Grand Committees, reduced in number from
sixty to forty ; (6) systematic overhauling by small com-
mittees of the Secretaries, just as the Treasury is now
overhauled by the Committee of Accounts.

The oddest phenomenon is the blindness of the mal-
content (socialistic new democratic Georgian ^ ) people.
They go on as if they were quite sure their representa-
tives would at Westminster be as conscientious, vigilant,
importunate, and unselfish as themselves. They do not
see how Society, through the clubs, &c., rounds off the
angles of the boulders that their catastrophic forces roll

' I. e. followers of Henry George.

502 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec.

out. Were I a Communist I would abolish representation,
and have government by ' Sections,' declaring their will
to each other and to the public offices by telephone.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Dec. 14, 1883.

I think it something like snobbishness to scoff at
Tennyson's barony, for the satirist is attaching undue
importance to the thing ; that is, importance in its effects
on the baron's character. It is not likely that so strong
a man should, by being made a lord, have his head
turned, so as to rate himself above a Milton. (Though
I for one do rate him far above Milton.) . .

Tennyson, when he made his name an inevitable one,
A. D. 1842, became known to us as a poetical exponent
of Spedding's politics, in the set of poems, ' Of old sat
Freedom,' ' Love thou thy Land,' &c. As a Whig he
must have had a feeling for the British peerage ; and
there is no (publicly known) reason for believing him
to be one of those ' Liberals ' who illiberally carp at the
class of lords, the only class we have.

The war passages in ' Maud,' and the Walter Vivian
prologue to the ' Princess,' seem to indicate a wholesome
English affection for the generous aristocracy.

To a man of such habits of thought the peerage is an
integral part of the Britain that he belongs to, and
though he cannot court it, cannot even write as Words-
worth did about Lowthcr, without loss of dignity, he is
bound to like it and meet it halfway.

If Walter vScott had not dabbled in hops, he might
have taken the step above the baronetcy. Macaulay
gives a clear enough precedent ; he was ennobled as an
historian rather than as a politician, since he had given

1883] TENNYSON'S PEERAGE 503

up politics for some time. The impudent fellow in the
Pall Mail must know that Shelley was a Bashi Hazouk
and an enemy of Kni^land, and that Burns was a sot,
and that Wordsworth was poor and unfit for the great
world, and not fully recognized as a fine writer during
his lifetime. I really cannot think of any writer that we
have had that could have been thought of for a lay
peerage besides Macaulay and Scott. Tennyson is
a finer writer than either of them. Our peerage is a
good deal more respectable in virtue and talent than it
was in the days of Scott or the days of Macaulay.

I hope many ' scholars ' will feel as much pleased at
Tennyson's ennobling as many Anglican Christians w^ere
at Newman's cardinalate. I hold that in taking it [the
promotion] when offered, each accepted a courtesy
graciously, and that each would have been unwisely
proud and misanthropic had he refused.

I hope the scholars — that is, the thousands of men who
recognize Tennyson as the English Virgil — will combine
to put something pretty in his towm house.

To a7i old Pupil.

Dec. 20, 1883.

I have alw^ays abstained from offering ultroneously
the applause given to mellonymphs . . . but I believe
I have almost always rejoiced with young men and
young women that I knew when they were in love \
and I have held that the nations would jar less and the
cities w^ould be liker to temples if government were
entrusted to young couples in their first year of wedlock.
The happiness of the months just before and after
marriage is perhaps an equivalent for wisdom.

504 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Dec. 1883

To Capt. A. H. Dru7nfnond.

Dec. 31, 1883.

I have a constant affection for actors and actresses.
I regret that we have no EngHsh language that seems
to suit them ; and if your beau-frere is a good actor,
I pity him for not being a Frenchman. French plays
seem to me so superior to English plays that I can
hardly understand educated people caring for any but
French ; however, I firmly believe that it does good for
the vast mass of people to be in our theatres ; our plays,
stupid as they are compared with the French, are quite
brilliant enough for the great mass of our people, and
they give them wholesome sensations, impressions, re-
flections— they let them see, what they cannot see in
drawing-rooms or chambers, how good are the hearts
of men and women. It is only on the stage that people
are allowed (apart from courtship and death-bed) to
show how kind and generous they are. So I heartily
wish well to our theatres, and read about them ; and when
I can raise the cash, send my wife and guests to them. '
I continue to enjoy with high relish good plays that I
I read, and good dramatic novels. . .

To H. W. Paul.

Jan. 21, 1884.

I do not know whether you are in London, but I have i
to seek a victim, and you are the most suitable. It is
only about General Gordon. The P. M. G, to-night
says that there is not a man to be found that does
not applaud his mission. Of course ' it's of no conse-
quence ; ' but here is a man that, so far from applauding,
went out of his way, when the news of the Soudan
massacre came, to write to the only friend he has that

Jan. 1884] ACTORS. GENERAL GORDON 505

has access to Ministers, and to he^ hini to observe
the fact that General Gordon in South Africa failed in
judt^ement and conduct so signally that he ought not
to be thouq^ht of for restorini^ order in the Soudan.
I read the whole of the Blue Hook about his doings in
Basuto r.and. (i) He ran amuck at every official that
he found there and thereabouts ; (2) when he had a
solemn interview with the savage chiefs who were stand-
ing out against the main body of the Basutos and trying
to prevent the re-establishment of British rule, which all
the others desired, Gordon went out of his way to assure
them that he thought them very fine fellows, and that
nothing should induce him to draw his sword against
them ; (3) he was in a great hurry to propose to the
Cape Government to disband their standing army ;
(4) he threw up like a spoilt child the appointment
which he had willingly taken, although Scanlan showed
the utmost forbearance, and treated him with courtesy
wholly unknown in that colony ; (5) he haggled with
the Cape Government for a sum oi £60 or ^70 to pay
his passage (he got it).

Till I read that Blue Book I had naturally believed
that he was a cross between Joan of Arc and Thomas
Carlyle. I then saw clearly that he was blinded by
conceit, and utterly incapable of doing justice to civilized
men.

I have not read the book about him ; but I see in
the P. M. G. a short account of his performances in the
Soudan. The one tangible fact is that he threw up
his Governor- Generalship of the Soudan because he
could not get on with the Government which employed
him. It seems almost an ascertained fact that his sup-
pression of the slave trade was merely ephemeral. But

5o6 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

the account given is of the nature of a myth. Dr. Arnold
said a propos to Strauss, ' absurd to suppose a myth
could grow up in the age of the Caesars.' Since then
the wise have said that there was a myth of Lord Byron's
life that grew up and was so strong that Goethe believed
it. It seems to me that Gordon is a mythical personage,
outside my pet Basuto Blue Book.

It is really ludicrous — a writer in the P. M. G. pro-
fessing a clearly supra-rational faith in an elderly
Engineer, saying that he will cook the goose if no
one interferes with him except Hartington and Co., as
if he could go to Suakim, ' summon ' a barbarous poten-
tate, make him supply his escort to Khartoum, and
when at Khartoum issue edicts right and left ; as if he
could act without subaltern officers, money, stores, gold,
&c. ; as if he were an homine drapeati^ and had an old
army out there ready to troop round him, as the French
veterans round Bonaparte at Frejus. . .

To Capt. A, H. DrufnnLond.

I Heathfield Gardens, March a, 1884.

I have been a-tiptoe about our odd little campaign,
proud to have three old pupils in it, to wit. Colonel
Hallam Parr of Mounted Infantry, &c. ; Colonel Edward
Wood of loth Hussars (who used to tell me, after he
joined the army, that I was the best soldier he knew) ;
Captain A. Wilson, R. N., Hecla^ my cousin, a perfect
specimen of the virtuous, well-bred, dutiful, hardy,
energetic seaman. I wonder such a scientific wamor
should be so ill advised as to use his sword to cut a man
that wore a tarboosh ; it is the converse of the mistake
made by the famous sabreur^ Wm. Morris, 1 7th Lancers,

884] EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN. GORDON 507

It Halaclava, who made point at a Russian, and could
lOt e^ct his sword out of the man's thick ^rcat coat.
The sailors at Teb have rubbed out tlie scandal of the
Boadiceas who bei^an the stampede at Majuba, and the
lOrdon Hi^^hlanders have about half made up for their
jnpardonable behaviour there.

To H. W. Paul.

Midnight, May 13, 1884.

You may remember my writing to you (Jan. 21) to
lodge with you a solitary protest against the mission of
the nondescript ' personality ' to the Soudan. I wish to
think historically ; and my present opinion is that the
Government has made no very serious mistake since
the mission of [Gordon] till W. E. G. last night blest
the insurrection. Neither of these mistakes seems to me
so serious as the mistake made when they did not
prohibit Hicks's expedition, and the other of not re-
inforcing the army of occupation when asked by Baring
to do so in December on Hicks's failure. I also think
that Gordon has done less harm and more good than
might have been expected, and has proved himself
a good commandant of Khartoum, the only important
fi/ace d' amies south of Cairo — nor am I sure that
Valentine Baker or Chermside would have done as well
;in Khartoum. . .

I I am on the whole glad that he is shut up, because
I wish the Government to be forced into a methodical
recovery of Berber and relief of Khartoum, and a sub-
sequent occupation of both, with Suakin and Massowa.

We have thrown the eagle over the rampart, and the
legion must go after it. Gordon was a satisfactory

5o8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June 1884

symbol : if he perishes, we avenge him, and he will be
no loss, and the avenging will be an excellent stroke of
national prowess.

To H. W. Paul. ■

June 5, 1884.

We occupied the Delta in 1882 to prevent anarchs
from hindering trade on the Canal — we said we were^
only on a visit — we now think, but we cannot prove,
that if we retire there will be another Arabi and another ',
choke in the Canal. I think it not unlikely ; but I think!
the risk cannot justify us in not keeping our promise.

If I were in power, I would try to get the Sultan to
put the sham ruler of Egypt under some tutelage
approved of by the six Powers, who would then look on.
I think it certain that this delegated government would
be infinitely less righteous and sensible than our Tewfik-
Baring-Grenfell-Moncrieff, but not worse than what we
tolerate in Crete and Albania. . .

It is always a marvel, always a source of respectful
gratitude to the Foreign Office, to the diplomats, that
we escape war with France these seventy-five years.!
Palmerston has shown us how to do it in a crisis ; it
seems to me that Salisbury knows how to act in ordinary
times. De Jarnac, the half- Irishman, called Palmerston
the manifest representative of ' perfide Albion.' I am
afraid of that phrase.

To Lord Roscbcry.

Nov. 19, 1884.

The Pan- Britannic federation seems to me to h
chimerical ; the Australasian federation feasible and not
very remote.

* Common rights,' the most salient phrase in tlu

AN. 1885] PAN-BRITANNIC FEDERATION 509

l^csolution passed Nov. 18, seems to mc, on careful
ixainlnation, to have a solid meaning when one considers
he Australasian states ; hut when I imai^ine a Pan-
Sritannic Leai^ue, I am at a loss to conceive what
:ommon riohts it would have to defend, that would not
)e also common to the states of Europe and America
)utside the League. 1

The' career' on which Forster dwelt is less chimerical.
But why assume that it can be kept open only by
;ederation ? If not federated, Australia and Canada may
remain as they are, subordinate, or they may be autono-
mous and completely independent. In this second case
It is not self-evident, I admit, but it seems highly probable
that naturalization would be very easy reciprocally, as it
is at present between Britain and United States.

Mutual defence against (say) Russia looks at first sight
k^ery desirable, but on inspection it is to me evident that,
if Russia fight England, the kindest thing Australia can
«io to England is to secede, and, when independent, lend
•her neutral flag, whilst we retain Hong-Kong and
Labuan as Crown Colonies, governed, not managed, as
bases for operations in the defence of our Pacific trade.
Similarly, if we fight France, Canada, seceding and
playing the part of a neutral state, will help us to keep
up our provision trade wath North America.

The most plausible argument for the League is that it
secures us against the imposition of protective duties on
our exports.

To A. D. Coleridge.

Jan. 27, 1885.

... I think Stewart rather more likely to perish than
to escape, because his troops will have fired away all
their cartridges long before Wolseley can catch them

5IO LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

up, and even if W. does catch them up, and bring
a few camel-loads of cartridges, I fear the second supply
will be blazed off before Earle can take Berber. . .
When I was told as a great secret about six weeks ago
of Wolseley's purpose of making a dash long before the
advance of the boats on Berber, I said to my informant,
* It is a leap in the dark — there is no knowing what the
column will find when it reaches the Nile — it is more
dangerous and romantic than even Havelock's advance
through Oude ; for he knew that if he reached the
Lucknow garrison his survivors were sure of some sort
of shelter.'

I now prepare myself to hear in a fragmentary
mythical way that Stewart's men will in February kill
their camels first to make a breastwork, and then to
eat, and that they have fought to the last gasp with
bayonets and a few revolvers.

It is a splendid enterprise, worth a hundred crusades.
Some of the fellow-countrymen of Elisha Kane and
De Long, some of the mates of Nordenskiold and Payer,
some veterans that served under Canrobert at Sebastopol,
my old Prussian doctor and perhaps one more Prussian,
will share our mourning and our worship of the British
valour.

As we are tempted to general hatred of Ireland, it is i
a good thing that of the officers slain at Abu Klea more |
than half are Irishmen : such a fact tends to revive the |
belief that the loyal Irish may hold out against the
accursed sneaks who follow Parncll.

livery patriot shoukl try to think correctly and feel
deeply about our army : to this end every one should
read Mrs. l^wing's Aldershot story, called Lactns sorie
7nea. I wept over it January 21 at noon and that

iBSs] STEirART. IVOLSELEY. LORD ROSEBERY k^ii

evening-. I jrot n telccrram about Stewart's fi^ht, which
carrit'cl mc back to the emotion caused one day in
November, i'^^\, when dear old Wolley, at three o'clock
school, oot a copy of the Mornwg Chronicle brought
by Billy Selwyn, and the doors being- open, I heard him
say before he read out the telegram, ' Make no noise ; '
and he sent me the paper, and I was such a Spartan as
to go through the lesson with the news not read ; and
then I read, ' 8,000 English and 6,000 French repulsed
60,000 Russians,' &c., &c.

Thirty years ago ; and I am still a boy when it comes
to news about the regiments.

To Lord Rosebery.

Feb. 12, 1885,

I wish you joy of being in the Cabinet. . .

I am tired of Royalty : though in Spain and Italy,
perhaps in Austria also, it is very serviceable at present.
j\lr. Gladstone ought never to have been P. M., because
he is so invincibly ignorant of British duties and interests
outside Britain. But he has not deserved to fall because
Khartoum has fallen ; and the cry about disaster is
unreasonable.

This is all that I inflict on you, except a kind wish
that you may escape flatterers and toadies, Scottish
colonial or others, and will never forget the great
example of political dignity, Mr. Pitt. . . Farewell.
Rule Britannia.

To Miss Lucy Stone.

25 Cannon Place, Hampstead, N.W.,

March 6, 1885.

I think you might, if the weather were middling
Marchy, try to get here in time for dinner, and sleep
two nights here as before, and forget music for the

512 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

whole time, except perhaps in church. I am quite used
to solitude, and as for dulness, it is my ' native element ' ;
but still I should like to have you here. . .

We have a new mile of walk through a forest very
near home, and up there we forget the roar and smoke
and visiting-cards of London, and we hear the larks —
only we have no lambs — otherwise it would be to
a near-sighted man rus ineruin^ real country ; but one
day I saw a herd of swine shepherded by a dog ; and
this was rustic, and at the same time novel.

I have one perfect friend up here, not far off. She
comes, with others, for six hours a week to learn. . .
Up here once a week she meets a friend as amiable as i
herself, who comes all the way from Piccadilly. These
women — ' girls ' every one says — make old age cheerful,
and help me to endure the provocations of the Glad-
stonites, the Russians, the French, and some Yankees.

If you come here I can set forth an encyclopaedia of
modern disputes and probabilities, such as the fiddlers
never think about correctly or even steadily.

To Sir F. Pollock.

March 6, 1885.

Molecular physics have made most visions of the
not-I very ugly, compared with what I enjoyed forty
years ago : but they have not destroyed the vision of

the State.

To Mrs. Herbert Paul.

Tan yr-Allt, Tremadoc,

July 7, 1885.

Your lexicon Is in my house far away. I meant to
bring it back, if I ever was summoned by Madame to go
a-cabbing and a-calling in unknown regions, as we do
about twice a year.

1885] BIOGRAPHY FOR BOYS 513

Perhaps you hardly care to have so big a book in
your * nest '? It has been of great use to me in making
Cjreek iambics for my little school-book and in getting
up my lessons for the class, as I had half forgotten
Demosthenes' Olynthiacs. We got through them
famously, and they fanned the flame of love of country.
My three full-grown school ladies are very sound
Britons, and at the end of our year's Greek reading
they gave me a ^ninerval^ to wit, the simple Autobio-
graphy of George Napier. This should be one of
Humphrey's books ; also Bruce 's Life of Sir William
Napier. For naval biographies I recommend Philli-
more's three bulky volumes about Admiral Sir William
Parker, Lady Belcher's (or Bourchier's) Lives of Sir
Edward and Sir Henry Codrington, Brenton's (or
Tucker's) Lord St. Vincent^ Barrow's Lord A 7tson and
Lord Hozve^ Mundy's Lord Rodney^ Collingwood's
Letters, M'Leod's Wreck of the Alcester^ Gillie's Ship-
wrecks of the Royal Navy, Deeds of Naval Daring,
Peter Simple (which is mostly fact). Lord Dundonald's
Autobiography is good in the first volume, not in the
second ; he is the ablest of our seamen after Nelson, but
Rodney and St. Vincent were very able.

I have lately drawn new flashes of joy and pride from
Lanfrey's notices of Nelson and Moore and Arthur
Wellesley in his NapoleoJt /, a remarkable, unique
book. . .

I had not been in North Wales, except when rather ill
and very sad. Mutiny month, 1857. It w^as touching to
go past the hills that I then rhymed about \ travelling
with the wife then imagined, and then within five months
of her birth.

* See lonica I, ' Amaturus.'
Ll

514 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept. 1885

Andrew is happy in having been introduced to
a peaceful family of wild rabbits in the cliffs here. He
and his playfellow pet the little things with the approval
of their mother, who quietly leaves the burrow and goes
into an adjoining hole. We have hopes of seeing an
otter-hunt in the glassy river Glas-lyn, which flows
close by, but may not be ruffled with oars. I flushed
a brood of wild ducks thereon last Saturday evening.

The ladies find the Welsh children pretty and taking,
the Welsh women very shabbily drest. I find the
soprano leader of the episcopalian choir rare in tone,
and the ladies say it has a very pretty face. We tra-
velled in Carnarvonshire, third class, with a dear young
mother of two, who had been in London three years,
and wept freely for joy when the well-preserved, well-
drest, hearty grandmother came into the carriage.
The language was lovely when these two talked it in
their happiness.

It is a comfort to know that these natives, however
fond they may be of dissent and gutturals, are not
taught to cherish the memory of implacable bards, or of
that predecessor-of- Irving bishop who makes his spiritual
profession in Henry IV. . . We think them very socially
amiable and intelligent, although on the surface rather
austere.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

I Cannon Hall Road, Hampstead,

Sept. 33, 1885.

Nothing can be more curious than that a Pericles
should be made known to us only by a book, Thucy-
didcs, copied out by some cretin at Constantinople just
before the Turks scattered the Greeks (the oldest MS. is

1

4

Jan. iP,86] N. WALES. TOWN AND COUNTRY 515

of that recent date), and by Plutarch, who wrote 600 years
after the death of Pericles. I mean there is no catena of
record or reference to Pericles ; one would expect such
a character to be preserved by such a man as Isocrates ;
one would expect biographers of great Athenians to
flourish at least as early as the time of Demetrius
Phalereus.

To Miss M. Rude.

Hampstead, Dec. 26, 1885.

People living in London are tempted to sacrifice their
mornings to notes, and their afternoons to calls, and
their evenings to elaborate meals. We up here escape
all that, and have some of the real advantages of London
life, whilst we escape the gossip and the pecking and
the sore-headedness of country towns and their neigh-
bourhoods.

To Sir F. Pollock.

Jan. 4, 1886.

The intellectual men of London ought to proclaim in
St. James's Hall their contempt for the parliamentary
manoeuvres.

I In most cases there have been no great dangers in the
upsettings of Ministries by the conventional automatic
* majority ' ; but now one sees — I mean people like you

' see—that we are risking too much in the voting game.

' To Sir F. Pollock.

Jan. 17, 1886.

If the loyal Irish consented and held their ground,
I fancy they would, somehow, sooner or later, find
a footing in representative bodies, and still more in the
administration of independent Ireland. As it is, the

L 1 2

5t6 letters and JOURNALS [Feb.

Leaguers seem at their wits' end to manage the labourers,
and they are perhaps already feeling their own weak-
ness, their need of the help of the gentlemen. Nor can
I believe that when they are not wanted as manipulators,
the Popish priests will be cherished by men like Parnell,
M'Carthy, &c.

Complete separation, if effected with the consent of
the Loyals, would not be an evil, or at least not a per-
manent evil. But it will be an evil, gratuitous and
shameful, if Gladstone is allowed to continue a mixed
Irish Government, such as will do wrong to the genteel
people and yet be so legitimate as to be backed by
law-courts and armed forces in the Queen's name.

To Hon, R. B. Brett.

Feb. 6, 1 886.

Let [Chamberlain] work out Nemesis on the great
tactician, on the Liverpool Canningite', who has for
forty-five years passed through so many phases, and
has, I really believe, outlived the virtue which was so
pleasing to eye and ear when I knew him as my exami-
ner and as a visitor speaking to us in our ' Pop ' debate ;
when, I remember, the tears came to my eyes for the joy
of listening to a young good man, the first I ever saw ;
when he made us write on a wise and beautiful sentence
of Burke's about the English constitution.

I now wish, even hope, to see the final fall of this man:
though, after all, he is even now a better and a wiser man
than most French, most American statesmen of my time.

^ Mr. Gladstone.

1886] IRISH SEPARATION. MR. GLADSTONE 517
7^0 y^ iVarre Cornish.

May 12, 1886.

I find I can teach much better than I could twenty or
thirty years aero, partly because I have by readinj^;- learnt
more English, and have profited by the wonderful supe-
riority of the Jebb race of scholars to those of my day ;
partly because women are divining rods to me : they
wish to know, they relish everything that is taught. . .

I seldom have a man to talk to. There came this
week a plain plunger, proud of his dragoons. He had
been in the great Punjaub manoeuvres ; he was happy
when he told me, and I when I heard him say, how the
Russians wondered at our British regiments galloping,
and all abreast charging a wall, clearing it, and galloping
on w^ithout a halt to re-form the line ; * we put two regi-
ments and six guns out of action by taking that fence.'

To F. Warre Cornish.

May 13, 1886.

Gladstone —

1 . Founded the system of control of the revenue offices
— before his time they helped themselves ; he made their
pay come out of ' supply ' voted by the House of Com-
mons.

2. Founded the tax on transfer of realty.

3. Founded the modern Sinking Fund so as to reduce
the Debt.

4. Founded the Local Government Board, which
lightened the work of the Home Office.

5. Abolished purchase of Army Commissions.

6. Enabled Forster to found primary education.

7. Enabled Henry James to quench bribery at elec-
tions.

5i8 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

8. Enabled Forster (?) or x to stop anarchy and
terror at elections by the ballot and by abolition of
the hustinpfs.

9. Exalted the character of England by initiating
effective support of the Liberals in Italy, which led to
the formation of a sixth Great Power, and bridled France
in the field of competition, to wit, the Mediterranean.

10. Exalted the character of England as the one
supremely disinterested, generous, and trustworthy
State, by seasonably delivering over to Greece the Seven
Islands received in 1 814-5 in trust.

1 1 . Delivered Enorland from the worst of all her
embarrassments, setting her face to fight France and
Russia, her inevitable natural rivals, without the very
great danger of being indirectly attacked at sea by
a secure ' neutral ' Power ; and, by clearing up a doubt
as to a point of international duty, did away with
a fruitful source of strife ; and, by confession of national
error, won back the long estranged affection of the
nation which grew out of ours ; . . . and this by the
expenditure of three millions, that is, one-third of the
cost of the Abyssinian campaign or the cost of four
Inflexibles.

These three last things required a sort of courage in
which many men of worth and distinction have been
deficient. . .

To H. W. Paul.

May 33, 1886.

And how do you answer my arguments founded on
Ricardo's theory ?

Rent is the expression of the superior usefulness of
soils to that soil which is barely worth occupying.

r886] IRELAND. SEPARATION 519

Land which (as Duke of Argyll avers of some of his
j land) costs £1^ an acre to drain is not land that renders
an economical rent — that is, a payment for the use of
inherent permanent qualities.

It is known (your friend Haldane must have seen, as
I have seen, wet land in Kerry, and it is certain that
a very great breadth of hill country in Ireland is like the
wet Kerry grazing- land) — it is known, I say, that there is
a great deal of land occupied by barbarians who are so
foolish as to undertake to pay rent for it.

It would cost us a measurable annuity, say a million
a year, to effect a (reKrayOun for these barbarians gradu-
ally : set their holdings rent free, make them freeholders,
give them a parliamentary title entered on a terrier or
cadastral register, leave them perfectly free to let, or to
sell, or to hypothecate. . .

It is absurd to tell us that after breaking up the exist-
ing compact State (w^hich is the glory of civilization, as
in France, Prussia, Italy, Switzerland, North America)
you can advance through Federation. This is vaT€pov
TTpoTepov. In certain geographical conditions Federation
may turn into a compact, unified, indivisible Republic.
This may be hoped for in Australia.

The arguments of Br^xe, Playfair, and others, all far
superior to Gladstone's, lead me to the conclusion that
Ireland must become in a few years as completely
separate from Britain as Holland from Belgium. Finlay
is the first of the speakers that has worked out con-
clusively the difficulty about the Veto, of which Asquith
wrote to me, and of which I wrote long ago to Pollock
and others.

Finlay foretells what is, under the Bill, inevitable ;
conflict of the two Ministries.

520 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [July 1886

It is silly to arg-ue from American sympathy. The
Yanks desire nothing more nor less than total secession
or divorce.

G. Smith, Brodrick, Trevelyan, and a host of admirable
writers all err, I think, in assuming that the Healys and a
O'Connors will continue to be impish w^hen left to ^
paddle their own canoe.

To F". War re Cornish.

July II, 1886.

I have read, chiefly on a voting trip, the thick-papered
over-priced volume ^ that you very kindly lent me.
I had never expected to see more of it than a notice
or two in the papers, which give, it seems, a correct
account of its tenor. It seems to me much more
instructive than the Early Instittiiions^ less than the
Ancient Law. The other volumes I have never even
seen. He is, as he was in 1842-5-8, when I used to be
with him, wonderfully incisive. No man's sayings stick
into me so tenaciously, yet there is hardly any charm
in those sayings. He had a rare charm for us, not for
me only, when he was a poet. His unpublished Plato
has haunted me these forty-three years. . .

I have heard of him since as a desperate old Tory.
I should guess few men so able have been so remote,
unconsciously, from friendships. This book, wise and
powerful as it is, seems to me so dry, even so bitter,
that it tempts one to prefer common kindness to wisdom.
I am tempted to say with the Publican, I thank Heaven
I am not as that Pharisee. I had rather be what I am
than be so superior a person as to speak of the extant
Knglish people as the ' faex Romuh'.' He does not

' Maine's Popular Governnxeni,

MAKCH1887] MAINE'S ' POPULAR GOVERNMENT' 521

scxim to have a glimpse of what Hutton, In the Spectator ^
at the beginning of this fine fight, expressed — a simple
reasonable trust in the good sense of the English people ;
he does not seem capable even of saying as Hutton said
about the same time, ' With a failing England, what
were life worth ? ' . . . Maine surprises me by indulging
in the contemptible absurdity, ' exceptions prove the
rule.' He assumes, what I recently heard ridiculed by our
keen friend, H. Paul, the success of Fitzjames Stephen
in showing that equality and liberty are incompatible.
As I never read that book and had no chance of in-
terrogating H. Paul, I do not know how Stephen is
proved to be wrong ; Maine at least seems to me to be
right. But how can one go at a Davitt with Maine's
Darwinian plea, ' the strongest is bound to win ' ? My
own humble way of dealing with a Davittizer is to say,
(i) If you are a father, can you honestly say that you
will give up to outsiders what you can put by for your
daughter? (2) Do you sincerely refuse to accept /^^y^?
and is not luck the source of very much of the envied
wealth ?

Here I release you. I romantically enjoyed twenty -
four hours at Tiverton and Witheridge, voting against
the Gamester, and talking with the shrewd, kind
spirited Devonians of humble station. It did me much
good.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

March 19, 1887,

I have been indirectly communicating with the Lau-
reate ; he had never heard of Calverley's Theocrittis .
He had seen some things of Calverley's about his own
poetry, and did not approve of the critic's substituting
' mariner ' for ' wanderer.' This seems a trifle, but it

522 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March !i«

fits into a very important doctrine about ' quantity,'
taught sixty or seventy years ago by Crabb Robinson
to Tom Moore. C. R. said —

' The merry bells of happy Trinity '

is a line of inadequate weight ; for ' happy ' put ' holy,'
and the line is heavy enough : so ' mariner ' is lighter
than ' wanderer.' . .

They talk of taking cadets fresh from public schools,
on the faith of University certificates, at sixteen or even
later. I am sure no Eton boy in his seventeenth year
would go into the Navy ; it is the age of social play-
srround ambition, the aofe at which a lad ceases to hate
all lessons, all teachers, at which a sharp lad sees his
way to the infinite joys of University life, &c., &c.
Whereas in the thirteenth year a boy is bored by
pen and ink and slate and ushers ; and thinking school
mere sham and treadmill, naturally pants for action,
enlargement, and is too ignorant to conceive of a ship
as a floating prison. At such an age I have known
Stanley, son of Sir James Graham, and Arthur, son of
Knyvett Wilson, and my able nephew, Charles Vidal,
eager to go to sea ; at such an age the illustrious
Beauchamp Seymour went. Boys at present exchange
a stagnation period, thirteen to fifteen, for a compara-
tively progressive period, or by going to the school
ship. The age for real learning, for forming concep-
tions, begins in the seventeenth year and lasts to the
twenty -fifth year or later.

It is fallacious to argue from the poor boys of the
impregnable : to them at fifteen or sixteen the Royal
Navy is as attractive as to the l^ton lx)y of the same age is
the cricket club, the long-boat, the Oxford or Cambridge
society.

I

1887] ENTRANCE TO THE NAVY. GIRLHOOD 523

7^0 Miss M. Rude.

May 5, 1887.

Girlhood is precious to an old man beyond all land-
scapes, music, and flowers ; thoui^h music and flowers
are said to be antidotes to a^e. I am missing my girl-
pupils sadly ; they are as good as nieces or grandchildren
to me. . .

I am reading a noble book given me last week by my
lady Greeks — two of them ; they put on their card that
it was ' in memory of the pleasantest and most helpful
teaching they ever had'— it is The Life of Sir He777y
Laiijrc7ice^ written, half, by a great soldier, his friend.
It gives the most lovely heroic character of Honoria his
wife — woman never appeared in greater sacredness than
in her character. . . There are other perfect women in it,
an ' Angel ' aunt, an ' Angel ' cousin, a perfect sister
Letitia, some perfect friends. That age was beyond
compare the happiest, at least for the Britons and the
Ulster men. To have lived in the flow of life, not in
the backwaters or swamps, as a Briton from 18 10 to
i860 w^as, I am sure, the last, the consummate blessing.
Since then our educated people have been less happy,
though more upholster ous, musical, and sparkling.

To F. Warre Cornish.

May 8, 1887.

I have been looking at some Latin I picked up by
chance, A. Wilkins' (Owens College) edition of Cicero
V. Catiline ; and I think it an unusually good edition.
It is thirty years or more since I read the speeches.
I now find that the second and the third ' ad populum '
are quite inferior to the first and the fourth, addressed to
the Senate. It seems to me that these two speeches to

I

524 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

the Senate, particularly the fourth, help one to under-
stand the composition of classes and sets in Rome.

I am much interested in Cicero's final statement as to
the patriotic union of the citizens, their rally, their trust
in the Senate and the executive Government. One
seems to get a more respectful notion of the Roman
people from Cicero than from Horace, Juvenal, Sallust,
Tacitus. But I have always felt that Livy more than
any writer bears witness to the character of the Romans,
including the municipals.

You moderns are misled by Mommsen, who hates the
Romans. I belong to the generation which took from
Niebuhr the idea of a peculiar providential people.
There is a passage in Niebuhr's Lectures about the
critical event, the Licinian reform, which he says saved
Rome from being one of those many oligarchic city
states that have been forgotten and buried. . .

Selections of Livy and Cicero [de Officiis particularly)
would enable you to show the development of the
Roman character, such as Horace in the third and fourth
books of Odes sets himself to restore, as he thinks.
I hold that it had not decayed, up to his time, and was
improving, thanks to the Stoics, the lawyers, the imperial
office system, &c.

We were left to the mercy of Jeremiads. We were
poisoned with invectives. We were made to learn
Juvenal by heart, and to believe that St. Paul's invective
in Romans was a correct and fair account of Rome. We
were at the mercy of Tacitus. We were never told of
the sublime idea of a Roman given by Lucan, nor of the
Roman beloved by Plutarch. We were never taught
that the railing accusation brought by Paul was the
utterance of one whose own mind was shaped by Roman

1

1887] CICERO. HORACE. ROMAN GENTLEMEN 525

law, and whose free action round the Aej^ean was made
possible by Roman cunomy. We were told that Re^ulus
was a creature of fiction. I used to teach that Livy, in
writing of Scipio, is hinivSelf a piece of Roman history :
he could not have formed his Scipio but for the actual
existence of Roman gentlemen. The Romans, I used to
say, invented honour ; and this, blended with Euripides'
Theseus, &c., gave the germ of the chivalry — the senti-
ment I mean, not the pageantry — which bloomed in the
sixteenth centur^% and was developed by our Cavaliers
and Roundheads, and crystallized by the standing
army of France (Louis XIV), as you may read in
Alfred de Vigny's valuable book, Serviticde et Grandeur
Militaires.

The aretalogical succession is that traced back to the
Scipio and Regulus of Cicero, Livy, and Horace (with
other fibres no doubt, including the Maccabees, but not
the older Hebrew^s).

In looking at Li\y's fragments, I find that Livy is
quoted by William of Malmesbury ; and I wish some
Dr^-asdust w^ould go through the Middle-Age Latins to
look for similar breccia.^ bits of Livy, Cicero, Horace,
Virgil.

Another very striking novelty (to me) is John Hill
Burton's doctrine that the Papacy was a function of the
Empire. I never read Bryce, nor yet much of Freeman,
and perhaps I ought to be familiar with Burton's view ;
it is given several times in his valuable History of
Scotla7id,

To apply this to your work. I ask you to edit Horace
in a free spirit, not held down by the accuser Mommsen.
I ask you to read Niebuhr to fit yourself for editing
Horace.

526 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct. ||

How came the Aeneid to its unbroken eminence ?
Was it not due to the opinion that it gave the ' provi-
dential ' genesis of the Roman people ? It seems to me
in literature unique. There is no book in the Hebrew-
Christian series that has had the same great fortune.
The Hebrews seem to have done something towards
keeping up the commemoration of their heroes, &c.,
but in a revolving squirrel- cage way not very superior
to Islam, not very different from the orations of Faneuil
Hall, July 4.

Horace seems to me to be entitled to the credit of
having led the way to the Aeneid. He went before
Virgil, I fancy, in the worship of the city of Rome, and
in the Walter- Scottish love of the rics of Italy. Virgil
made Italy, Virgil was the first antiquary ; but I guess
he got his impulse from the Epodes and Odes.

To Sir F. Pollock.

Oct. 5, 1887.

Permit me to say that I regret the lofty abstinence of
your class of thinkers and authorities from such humble
topics as this ' Unionist ' and such poor patriots as
myself are fain to fret about. . .

You great thinkers are, I observe, tempted to some-
thing worse than ' superior person ' serenity ; to wit, to
what 1 believe is called ^TTLxaipiKaKLa. You are tempted
to the bitter enjoyment of ministerial and parliamentary
futilities and failures. What good does Maine do his
country by sublimely pointing out the fact that democracy
is, without artificial checks, dangerous } I say it is his
duty to use his power of thought and his authority to
help the Halfours and Ridgeways in their administration.

I am sure 1 lallam could not have tolerated any

m-j'] ^ENEID. LORD ROBERT CECIL. MARTIAL 527

epicurean jurist, a sajre analoi^ous to the arch -epicurean
who * oste()l()<^ize(l on the battlefield of Jena.' I was
never properly educated, but I spent many hours with
men who were educated, and I have only to go back to
the visions and he pes of those days in order that I may
feel what you and your master ought to do now for
evi'Ofxia.

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

Nov. 1887.

[Sam Rogers on Mr. Fox. ]

' Fearless, resolved, and negligently great.'

This adverb pleases me : one could have applied the
line to Hartington, only he has, it seems, ceased to be
negligent. . . It must be thirty-five or thirty-seven years
since I was in the House of Commons on a dull afternoon,
listening to acrid doctrinaire attacks on Oxford. There
was a lone man high up in the old temporary House ; he
, lifted his hat and said, ' I beg leave to deny the truth of
what the honourable gentleman has said about Merton(.'*)
College.' Just about that and no more did he say. I
thought. That lad will go far; it was hisjiertethsit struck
me ; it is so different from bounce, so clearly a thing of
inheritance ; t7 chasse de race. That lad was Robert Cecil,
uncle of the full-grown, well-bred Secretary for Ireland.
But there is this huge advantage for the younger man :
he was not reared on the bridge of Al Sirat, the razor-
edge of distinction, the evasive sophistry of Puseyitic
Oxford. However, the present Premier has — the ex-
Premier has not — outlived the sophistication.

To Miss Janet Bartruin.

Nov. 4, 1887.

I am dipping into Martial by myself; it is a most
curious thing, his popularity as a fashionable ^^r2(:?^/<f/^/

528 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [JanJ

writer in the Rome of Domitian. There is generally
a want of deep feeling in him, but he has at least as 1
much sentiment as our eighteenth -century poets before
Cowper and Burns ; but the truth is, the eighteenth
centur}^ really ends not at 1800, but about 1783.

To Miss M. Rude.

Jan. 16, 1888.

I have been two days with Andrew at my sister's
cottage at Egham, Surrey, just outside Windsor Park.
She uses herself a ^^"40 a year house, which she built for
philanthropic purposes. . . She lives in a street of small
poor new houses : she lives with and for the poor of her
district ; — she is mother to all the children, specially the
big boys leaving school and wanting employment. She
is become in her old age the gentlest and most saintly
and wise of women : it is a really beautiful life that she
leads ; with her little income, half what she had, reduced
by munificence, she does more good and shows more
hospitality than any magnate I ever knew.

To Sir F. Pollock.

Jan. 23, 1888.

Contagion of revolutionary ideas (apart from interests)
is the inexhaustible source of difficulty.

We had to give way to Grattan and Flood in 1 780 for
fear the Irish Protestants should follow the example of
the Americans.

In 1796 the revolutionary propaganda upset the Irish
compromise. But for a Christmas storm, a real French
army would have begun serious war in Kerry. In 1797
we averted a catastrophe by destroying at Camperdown
the Dutch fleet, which was to have helped France and

i888] JKJSII RETRIBUTION. SEPARATION 529

Spain to get the temporary command of our home
waters.

The rebellion of 1 798, and the subsequent wild con-
spiracies of Fitzgerald and Despard, &c., were the pro-
ducts of general revolutionary fever, and the landing
of Humbert s French brigade in County Mayo was a bit
of revenge for our meddling with Vendee.
I In 1848 the Smith O'Brien outbreak was mainly due
to the continental revolutionary stirrings. It was quite
irrational, since we were doing our best to follow up the
just and beneficent policy of Melbourne and Thomas
Drummond.

In 1866 the Fenian rising was the sequel of the
American Civil War. As we had abetted Semmes,
Spence, and other secessionists, it may be thought that
we were served out fairly enough.

Our penance for our great Palmerston-Gladstone-
Z'w/^.y- Society sin, the fostering of secession, takes the
form of Irish difficulty. I have all along felt that it
serves us right. . .

Well, all this shows that we are in danger if we relax
our garrison-hold of the adjacent island. Self-preserva-
tion requires us to keep guard sternly. . .

It is not invasion of Britain from Ireland that we need
fear. The Europeans would invade either at Pevensey
in Sussex or at Aldborough in Suffolk. This is well
known to the Staff College savants. Boulogne is the
; one great harbour from which France can now send
an army against Britain. . . It is not worth while for the
European enemies to attack us on land ; they can bring
us to ransom by a short stoppage of our commercial
ports, which can be effected by stopping neutrals close
to our coasts.

M m

530 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

To Miss Tanet Bartrum.

•^ Feb. 19, 1888.

B. asked, ' Why did Aeneas leave Dido ? ' I said, ' The
Church summoned him from the world, visions of destiny
compelled him. He was marked out to do the great
sacred thing-, to found the Empire. Virgil is bound to
make you see how holy and sublime was Rome, and the
more his hero sacrifices for it the grander does it appear.
The more splendid Dido is, the more splendid is the
sacrifice made to duty.' I had never thought of this
explanation of Virgil's art till that very moment. I
pointed out also that Dido's passion and pain are infinitely
beyond any womanly emotions pourtrayed in any book
before Virgil, or in any subsequent book before Kenil-
worth. . . Another thing I tell the ladies about Virgil :
he is the first man that ever described with love and
pride a country (to wit, Italy). Sophocles is the first to
write thus about a place, to wit, Colonus, his birthplace.
The pathetic love of Jerusalem is expressed in Psalms
which very likely were of about the age of Sophocles (?).

When I said this about Sophocles, Margaret, who is
but eighteen, said, ' Euripides seems to have loved
Thebes, his country's enemy.' She is by herself reading
Bacchae^ in which he does not seem to love the fir wood
of Cithaeron, which is Theban ; but I forgot to point out
to her that he glorifies Athens in \y\^Medea\ 'Ep€x_OdbaL
TO TTakaLov oA/3ioi. . . All four are vividly interested in
the dramatic business, the formation of character, in
Philocteies^ and we are to finish it before Easter.

To A. D. Coleridge,

* Ftb. 37, 1888.

All the ' chance gifts ' (Sidney Walker's phrase), all
the unexpected Valentines, all the kindnesses that are

i888] AENEAS AND ROME. BRITISH PROGRESS 531

not scored nor paid for, but only linked with other kind-
nesses, as when 1^. C. HJ said to Russell Day, who
wanted to repay a ^id, ' No ; keep it, for some one else,
perhaps ' — all this keeps the human race so far sweet
as to be worth the care of anwls. But the social obli-
gations, the feasts ' given ' to those who have ' g-iven '
feasts, the card-mongering, the calculated retention of
acquaintances, the avowed resentment of slights — all
this belongs to the world that is to perish. ' Thank God,
the fashion of this world do^k pass away ! ' said Charles
Abraham in the Windsor pulpit. . .

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

March 13, 1888.

The strangest new fact to me in the book is the Duke's
approving a priori of the invasion of Affghanistan in
1838, when we had no base of operations, being intruders
in crossing Scinde on the left and Punjaub on the right.
The French in Mexico were not more rash than we
when we went, via Ghuznee, to Cabul.

From 1838 to 1858 you have a twenty years' series

of advances and conquests ; of course blotched with many

' smashes. Compare it with any twenty-year period of

I French, Roman, or Russian military history, and you

I find it to be by far the most solid thing, except Caesar's

■ ten years' conquest of Gaul. But w^hen Caesar was

adding Gaul to Roman Italy, Romans had a terrible

smash in the East. When we were adding Punjaub

(twenty-seven millions then, about fifty now) to British

India, we were also opening up China, occupying New

Zealand, starting the gold colony of Victoria, annexing

Pegu, Natal, &c., &c.

' Dr. Hawtrey.
M m 2

532 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

Melbourne's six years are made out by routine scrib-
blers to be years of weakness. In no other period have
we confronted a strong France so defiantly and effectually.
We had eighteen sail of the line in the Levant, and we
cleared Syria of French-Egyptians. As to Canada in
that period, her history is a rare if not unique exhibition
of tentative management ; vide Memoirs of Lord Syden-
ham, Elgin, and Metcalfe.

To P. Warre Cornish.

March i6, 1888.

Of the four ^ who are now finishing Philoctetes only
one, the eldest, aged, I believe, twenty-five or more,
is soundly conscious of ignorance : the other three,
however, of whom two are twenty-one, have greatly
improved lately in wishing to have doubts cleared up,
and in patiently enduring the strict insertion of sup-
pressed antecedents, &c., &c. All four have the ' utter-
ance ' of a genuine vivid literary sensibility, and they
avenge me on the /3op/3opo^i;/xot (Sap^apocfxtnoL of my
usherdom.

To A. D. Coleridge.

April 33, 1888.

I never could relish Matthew Arnold's prose, except
the preface to Merope and the Homer Lectures; but
1 have not even looked at a tithe of his prose. I sup-
pose he was driven to patronizing Jesus Christ as the
only way of earning cash. It is a mean way of getting
a livelihood, but hardly baser than making money by
tracts and rigmaroles. . .

' Girl-pupils.

1888] TENNYSON'S WELLINGTON ODE 533

I read the Ode ' aloud a^i^ain and ag-ain in those days,
never without hii^h emotion and lumps in the throat.
I have read it with Herbert Paul at Halsdon, collating
the original with the amended text — then, too, with
choking at sundr)^ points — that was about 1875. I have
read it in 1888 to my son, with more thrill and throb
than ever. I take him past the hyacinths and Achilles
and Apsley House, telling him how the tradesman in his
van protected the off hind leg of the Duke s horse all
along Holborn. We live and grow on the Duke ; and
it is the Ode, even more than Napier, that sustains one.

I was in St. Paul's when the white plumes on the
coffin stirred like a soul to the draught under the
western door. I am truly glad that I live in the only
age in which my country had a poet for her standard-
bearer, doing ample honour to her throughout.

I had a little pleasure on Saturday. A girl of thirteen
came and said, ' Will you take me to the Tower on
Monday ? it is my half-term holiday, and all my people
are engaged elsewhere.' I guess there are not many
men of sixty-seven whom a girl would reckon on thus.
We went, and we delighted in the Tower jackdaw sitting
and picking and pecking about cannon, howitzers, &c.,
things that date from Ramillies ; and other old things.

To Miss Gwendolen Graham.

Hampstead, Sept. 15, 1888.

. . . Andrew grew a big inch in the eight weeks of
his vacation, and he went back yesterday to report that
I had twice played cricket with him on the Heath and

* Tennyson's ' Ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington.'

534 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

bowled him out nine times. My bowling is above the
standard of his more youthful playmates. He has left in
our charge a big caterpillar of Belgian birth, who is to
spin slowly and to become a sphinx next year ; and as
the Duke of Wellington reported to his gardener's son
when at school about his toad, so I am to report of the
chrysalis. It was found by the boy feeding on bramble
leaves, high up in the ruined keep of Franchemont ; so
it is sanctified by association with Sir Walter. . .

Andrew on board ship in both the trips across the
Straits stalked and ran to and fro, looking at everything
in -board and overboard, as if he were a Blue Rover, an
heir of a Viking. Twice he ran aft to report to me that
he had reached the heel of the bowsprit, and there was
a settled rainbow under the cutwater ; and he claimed
acquaintance with two kinds of floating seaweed, and
took pleasure in a compact squadron of gulls well out at
sea ; and he saw a pretty lift of ' sardines ' in a net lifted
by lever in Calais port, a shower of live spangles. So
I saw through his eager eyes. He has become quite
manly in social tact and in reflection, and he is very
honest. . .

I am expecting a MS. to correct ... a translation of
the Latin correspondence of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.
Luckily, I have a big dictionary. Colet, Fisher, More,
are the first real English;//^;/ ; the first that I feel I could
have talked to with comfort. As for Englishwomen,
I think I could listen for an hour to Rachel Russell, but
not to Mrs. Hutchinson ; I could talk with Fanny Burney,
not with Mary Lepel, or Mary Wortley Montagu, or Mary
Unwin — but I could have tried to please Mrs. Thrale
and Quccny.

I saw at table d'hote the thing I specially delight in.

1888] NATURAL HISTORY. CAMBRIDGE 535

a matronly lady eagerly pouring" her mind and heart
upon a l^right, unaffected girl of eighteen. . .

To Mtss Givendolen Graham.

Sept. 1888.

. . . As a Kingsman I used to be surprisingly honoured
in Trinity Hall, which was then rather ' middle-class,'
now perhaps very fashionable. I knew very few men at
the other colleges. You will take care to see the outside
of Mr. Pitt's rooms at Pembroke. It is worth while to
search out the ' School of Pythagoras,' the mission -cell or
offshoot of Merton College, Oxford, which had land in
or near Cambridge, and sent men to open a branch
establishment. Milton's mulberry tree perhaps exists
still in the inner court of Christ's College, which is other-
wise not attractive. I have visited Magdalene College,
where the absurd Pepys has his memory and his vulgar
tastes embalmed in a library. The Round Church used
to be our pet in 1842-3. I spent £20 there on a glass
image of the Venerable Bede, whom I piously believed to
have lived and studied and taught hard by — £20 was
then to me even a greater sum than it is now in my later
phase of poverty. But I was an ' ecclesiologist.' We
used to explore every church in the surrounding vil-
lages. Some of them were pretty, such as Trumpington
(Chaucer's) and Grantchester ; these are within an easy
walk for you. Remember Madingley ; take the slope to
the left so as to see the little Waterloo field, then turn
to the right to come by the country house, the lake, &c.,
then back by the lower road. It would be all done in
two hours without dirtying the shoes. Some night go
to the Observatory and see stars through the great
telescope. . .

536 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

WORDS FOR THE TUNE ' LEBEWOHL.'

With these words ' good-bye,' * adieu,'

Take I leave to go from thee,
Leave to pass beneath thy view

Through the haze of that which is to be.
Fare thou forth, and wing thy way,

So our language makes me say ;
Though I faint, the fainting spirit hovers 3^et

Near doors of the shrine of promise.

Though the fountain cease to play,

Dew may glisten near the brink ;
Though the time-worn mind decay,

As of old it thought so must it think.
Leave alone the darkling eyes,

Fixed upon the moving skies ;
Cross the hands upon the bosom, so to rise

To the throb of the heart that loved thee.

To Miss Gwendolen Graham.

Oct. 1 8, 1888.

... I tried in vain to do verses about Madame
Chardon. She was the young- pretty wife of an
Mendant of French troops in the conquest of Corsica,
1766 or so. De Lauzun, the pet of Pompadour, &c.,
was there as aide-de-camp. The world turned out to
see the taking- of a fortified post of PaoU's men. As it
was evident there was to be a real fight, M. Chardon had
to go to the rear for an ambulance. Madame was
mounted ; she insisted on charging with the dragoons
whom Lauzun had to guide or encourage ; bullets
rained; she went through the thing. The iv hole force
silently agreed to say nothing about it. Here, says
Sainte-Beuve, we see ' Tancienne delicatesse des Fran9ais';
but I do not know whether he means the usual ' age
of chivalry' was not gone in 1766, or the men of 1766
were better gentlemen than the men of the Second

Ii888] FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOLDIERS 537

Empire, for whom lie was writing- He is the only
writer I know that loves as I love modern soldiers —
or perhaps I must add Alfred de Vi^ny ; only Alfred
deals with fiction, Sainte-Beuve with real authentic
biographies.

The truth should be known that from Benhow (1700;
down to Wellington, the French and the English almost
always behaved in war with generosity, courtesy,
chivalrousness. Nor were the Russians without these
graces in 1854. But this generosity to enemies is easier
than steady unromantic courtesy towards one's fellow-
countr}^men. This, I fear, was not always practised by
our Peninsular w^arriors.

I find that Scott, like Canning, w^as unjust to Sir John
Moore ; Castlereagh, on the other hand, spoke out
handsomely for him after his death ; but the Tory
Ministers had been compelled by George III to give
Moore the command. I believe Moore is the ideal
soldier of the modern British army. Ages ago I read
his life : afterwards I learnt that his biographer, his own
brother, disparaged him as a Whig, that is, on Canning's
principles. . .

This is not a good pen for want of hardening. It wt.s
made by ai\ amateur. He shot the crow at that beloved
place, Ilfracombe ; it is a Devon place. The maker is
a Johnston of Annandale ; a perfectly good man and
most faithful friend.

To Miss Janet Bartrum.

Anniversary of Navarin, Oct. 20, 1888.

I am reading old Sainte-Beuve Causeries^ which are
worn to looseness. They are very instructive, creamy,
wholesome ; they form in the mind a habit of correct

538 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

thinking and moderate sympathy. Any good heart
would delight in Lacordaire's funeral sermon on General
Drouot, describing the little baker's boy of three crying
at the door of the Christian Brethren's School because
they said he was too young to enter ; afterwards rising
at 2 a.m., when the fire was lighted for the oven, and
reading by the light of the burning wood. Lacordaire's
last words were, ' I have loved, dearly loved, young
people.' He came in age to Oxford, and sighed when
he saw the gownsmen, thinking of his own Soreze
pupils.

To Miss Gwendolen Graham.

Oct. 28, 1888.
You have been away three weeks and finished Anlt-
gone^ and caught one cold. You have not yet seen
Nollekens' Mr. Pitt in the Senate House, nor Roubilliac's
Newton in Trinity College Chapel, nor the ' Knight and
Death ' of Diirer that hangs in the old part of the
University Library ; please to see them all three. I go
over in my mind every detail of ancient interests now
that you are in my ' ancient haunts.' As to the lectern
in K. C. C. I fear you are making a mistake ; so I write of
it that it was given by an early Provost, Hapombleyn —
that it stood broken in the Library when I was young,
that when I was rich I had it done up by Skidmore, the
best metal artist of the day in Church work ; when
mended it was set on an oak platform made by Rattee,
of Cambridge, then the best carver of oak, &c., for
churches; then I had to pay Butterfield, the then best
architect for High Church, £2 2S. for a design of
candlesticks for it ; and then I had to get the candle-
sticks, and altogether it cost nearly £^0^ and it was

1888] SAJNTE-BEUVE. CAMBRIDGE. NOVELS 539

worth it : and our Colleq^^e archaeolog-ist made out that
the iniai^e on it niio^ht be considered a fairly authentic
tracHtional portrait of ' King Henry Sixt ' ((juoting-
' Black Arroiv '). When the Queen visited Cambridge,
I think in 1844, when I was an undergraduate, and as
Scholar ' in residence ' or vScholar of the week should
have read the First Lesson to her, the Provost Thackeray,
though proud of me as a Chancellor's Medallist and
Craven University Scholar, told me, on the ground no
doubt of my eyes and feeble voice, to yield the Old
Testament to James Yonge, who had a good voice — but
this was no pain to me, nor did it quench Hippocrene in
me ; for I broke out into a Sonnet which to this day has
never been read by any one, yet I like it myself . .

To Miss Gwendolen Graham.

Nov. II, 1888.

. . . Le Sage is glorified by Sainte-Beuve as on a level
with La Fontaine, Fielding, Goldsmith, below Moliere
and Cervantes. In what way do you suppose these
fellows generally are dull, compared with Horace, Homer,
Virgil, Tacitus, Macaulay, Mrs. Gaskell, C. Bronte,
Cherbuliez, &c. ? I think the thing that oppresses me in
the old moderns^ say Chaucer, Spenser, and now also
in Le Sage, is the uniform pace, the steady amble, the
pedometer, the camel tramp of their narratives. A magic
lantern with a succession of slides is, I think, similar to
old modern narratives, such as Candide and Wilhelm
Meister. Ask your learned friends what they say to
this. It is held that Werther and Adolphe are the
germs of the modern novel, that is, the analytic novel ;
but what you, my dear comrade, and I like, is the
dramatic novel, is it not.'' Abbot., Guy Mannering^

540 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

Kenilworth — thus far you lead me with your firm step ;
and eager hand. Then we part ; you do not agree with
me in going on to the mixed analytic-dramatic novels,
Prosper Randoce^ Miss Rovel^ Ascanio^ La Guerre
des Femmes^ Les Rot's en Exil^ &c. . .

To Miss M. Rttde.

Jan. 9, 1889.

I am glad to think that Andrew is likely to go into
the Royal Navy, and I try my best to prolong my life so
as to see him in middy uniform, as I saw my innocent
nephew about thirty-six years ago. It is a beautiful,
honourable life. Even in the unwarlike Navy, there is
glory in the daily contest with the wind and the wave.
I have respected and admired some officers of mail
steamers, men with grave, gentle, patient faces. Better
the lifelong struggle with danger than the simpering
social servitude of home, the card-mongering, the ' nice '
drivel of talk in Japanned parlours, the accumulation of
dishes at dinners, the preying of pampered males on
penurious wives.

To Miss Gwendoleti Graham.

Jan. 23, 1889.

. . . You said you Hkcd Stephen Langton. I find that
he began in Britain the shocking practice of killing
a heretic for heresy. I said I began with Colet, More,
Fisher. I retract this. I delight in Wycliffe and prefer
him by far to mediaeval foreigners, such as Arnold of
Brescia, Abelard, I^ernard, &c. . .

There used to be a Puseyite reprint of the Life of
Ambrose Bonvvick, a nonjuring pious student, a Johnian
I lliiiik, of about A. I), \'^^^i^. It used to interest me to see

1889] NAVY. CAMBRIDGE 541

what his studies were : chiefly, I think, Cartesian science
with ' moral philosophy ' or metaphysics, the l)est books
then extant -a very different sort of course of study from
those two alternatives which were set up and orgfanized
about 1800, to wit, Mathematics and Classics. But of
course you and I would be more really interested in
Mn Pitt's studies, which are sufficiently described in the
Chatham Correspondence. . .

I have enjoyed Homer on the footing- of a Fenimore
Cooper — we have killed thirteen Thracians and carried
off the horses of Rhesus to-day with almost as much joy
as if we had been taking scalps.

Yesterday we saw the ' monuments ' in the Abbey, and
the trophies, relics, models, &c., at the United Service
Museum — the boy was very happy there ; and by luck
there was a real reefer in blue and brass showing the
things to kts father, a dull man ; and I saw the Duke's
cocked hat and the white plumes which, in 1852, I saw
stirred by the wind on his coffin at the west gate of
St. Paul's. . .

To Miss Gwendolen Graham.

Feb. 16, 1889.

. . . Did you hear of the King's lads cheering the new
Provost on his coming out of Hall on the day of his
election ? That bit of nature gave me a happy thrill. . .
The dear old College, young in its educational growths,
needs a man of real tact, patient, modest, with no
cards to play. Our new Provost is a gentleman, and
akin to Jane Austen, who was a real lady (my grand-
mother knew her). Miiis sapientia will be good for
our Kingsmen. . . What is wanted is what was found
supremely in General Lord Raglan, the constant habit

542 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

of rendering to ever}' one his due in little things as
in great things. I have been driven by dearth to pass
from Kinglake to Livy. I am reading Lib. xxii,
beginning after Cannae. I delight in the strain of
' honour ' therein discernible : Livy's authorities, still
more his readers, must have had delightful habits of
thinking about self-sacrifice, {id^Xity ^ pudor — summufn
crede nefas, &c., &c. . .

To Miss Margaret War re Cornish.

March 22, 1889.

Your colleagues were interested in a digression to
Thucydides and the word ^lAoKaAou/xer, and in Euripides
(Hecuba) on inherited honour -s,^nse, and in Xenophon's
turning Spartan.

I think of turning Swiss, but this is because I am
dyspeptic : in ordinary pepsy I adhere to Great Britain,
Guernsey, &c., and as Andrew R.N. is reported as ' well,
bright, and working well,' I try to be alive for his service,
April 17. . .

There has been an elaborate Treatise in the Times on
the ' agrarian ' strife and the proposed healing measure
now before Parliament. Concerning my native town
Torrington, it is denoted by the writer — probably a
myrmidon of Shaw Lefevre, M.P. — as ' near Barnstaple.'
We were a Parliamentary Borough as late as the reign
of Edward III, we were twice celebrated by Clarendon.
Barnstaple is a flourishing upholstery place — we glove.
Barnstaple boasts a statue of Queen Anne — we boast
a Castle and a noble site and the purest of English
(South T^'nglish) rivers. . . ' Nil mihi rescribas, attamcn
ipsa veni ' (Ovid).

iBSg] GREEK LESSONS. TORRINGTON. EURIP/DESs^3
To Miss Rose Paul.

April II, 1889.

I have had a lonqr half year of maladies and anxieties,
and 1 bei>- you to Ixilieve, you two, that were missing
yesterday, that my winter has been very delightfully
cheered by your two minds and voices.

The twenty-seven years of converse with the ruder
sex gave me no such listeners or speakers as I get from
the gentler sex in these last years. The two undying
evergreen languages have been for me made beautiful by
this after-growth of girlhood.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

May 21, 1889.

The Strange thing in this existing world is the co-
existence of wonderful power over * nature ' with a very
rapid and wide-ranging increase of sensibility. If this
increase of sensibility goes on, there will be in a genera-
tion or two a tragedy of human life such as would amaze
Virgil and Shakespeare if they could come back to
look at it.

I am reading for the first time since 1843 Euripides'
Supplices. It is a really curious work in so far as the
situation is one that prepares one for intense emotions,
and yet the childless ladies, the ruined Adrastus, the
generous Theseus, say hardly anything that moves one.
I suppose it is the germ of ' Theseide ' and ' Knight's
Tale.' It would be easy to understand the original
Greek pathos being watered down in the aquarelle of
Chaucer. If he and his recent predecessors had got
hold of Cassandra and Dido, I should be quite prepared
for dilution — but here in the Suppliants there turns out
to be nothing to dilute.

i

544 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June

I have in two days made a pencil edition, for a friend
at Newnham, of Livy's Scipio, Book xxvi, and it is
curious to be able at my time of life to observe that
I read the book with enthusiasm. I put it to my friend
that Scipio is the type of the gentleman. This is stale
enough, but to me it is a new thing to observe (to fancy
perhaps) that Livy has twisted into his Hellenic -Italian
hero a thread of Hebrew hagiology. I mean that his
Scipio represents the Moses of the retirement in Midian
or the Elijah of Horeb, the Baptist of Jordan, in the
mysterious secrecy of his preparation for action ; and
this with a Pelasgian or primitive imagination oi serpent^
which is perhaps drawn from the same source as the
legend of Cadmus.

To Rev. E. D. Stone.

June 2, 1889.

I am studying Chaucer all through. His Griselda is
probably the finest, sweetest, neatest thing in the litera-
ture of all Europe, and it makes me weep; he is infinitely
better than Spenser and Ben Jonson. I would even say
that he is the best writer between Martial and Montaigne,
though very unequal. . .

After all even Horace is beaten by Martial in ' laboured
luck,* in perfect finish.

I have tried in vain to get through Charles T. Turner's
volume.

Alfred is to Charles

What Milton is to Quades.

To A. D. Coleridge.

July a 1889.

Of course your friend looks at Nelson as he appears in

Mrs. Trench's y^//^/-;/^/, drunk, vain, &c.

1889] CHAUCER. NELSON. SHELLEY 545

I have for forty years held that Nelson's mixture of
vices and virtues is small as to King David's.

There is a note in the Nelson Dispatches which
1 prize hiq^lily. On the way between Madeira and the
West Indies in 1805, when becalmed, and one would
suppose ragging- for a wind and fiercely irritable, he wrote
to Keats of the Superb to this effect: ' Nevermind being
lag- — you do your best. Come and dine with me.' I try
hard to squeeze a bit of verse out of this.

This imaginative affection for a Trowbridge at St.
Vincent, for a Collingwood at Trafalgar, for a struggling
Keats in the Sargasso Sea, is unlike anything that I have
observed in the thousand biographies.

Your friend may possibly overlook, if not w^arned,
Phillimore's Life of Sir Williant Parker^ in w^hich
Nelson appears to very great advantage, cheering,
blessing, enriching his smart young Amazon Captain.

No man should presume to write of those days without
first sweetening his idea of the sea-captain in a careful
perusal of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Her Wentworth
is her own lost lover, and a sweet knight of the quarter-
deck.

To Miss Rose Paul.

Sept. 26, 1889.

I have been looking through the eight octavo volumes
of Shelley published for Forman, as the Shelley Society
wants me to give them a paper on their rhymer's
connexion w^ith the classics. I am suffering from the
nausea of this voyage through the 'multitudinous,'
' fountains-mountains,' ' pinions-dominions,' ' vermilions-
pavilions,' ' oceans-motions ' ; as the convict said about
Guicciardini, I say I'd rather correct Fourth Form exer-
cises than read four whole volumes of Shelley's rhymes ;

N n

546 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

but I endure his blank verse cheerfully, and I like the
man himself as he appears in his letters, and I like his
prose thoughts, and think he would have made a capital
M.P., and would have been very happy had he outlived
the Holy Alliance and lived into ' England's happiest
Age,' 1 828-1858 — but oh, those rhymes : ' spirit-turret,'
' fortress- portress,' &c.

To Miss Janet Bartrtim.

Oct. 12, 1889.

I will send you my Phaedo if you like. Hind makes
it intelligible, but you will perhaps think a good deal of
it transcendentally subtle and laboriously pointless ; at
least I do. Yet it is the loveliest book in the human
parts, the one ancient book that gives one sweet pains as
a fine novel or poem of our time does, and I have now
been through it twice with high-minded women. . .

It is to me incredible that Jane Grey ^ understood
Phaedo^ except the dramatic parts ; but her trying to
read it, her being drawn to it by sympathy and curiosity
is a thing that amounts to a sudden and delightful
promotion of our womanhood.

What a gulf between Caxton and Ascham — one
hundred years or less.

I was talking with Furnivall about Caxton's novelties
in language : he agreed that Caxton would have found
no one in Westminster or England to give him a critical
estimate of his words and phrases — Caxton tninslating
from the French was as free as Robinson Crusoe in his
setting up a homestead.

I am to make a ' paper ' for the Shelley Society about
vShelley's classical attainments : in order to qualify

' See the reference to her in the prize-poem * Plato.'

i8Qg] PI LI EDO. LADY JANE GREY. DR. JOHNSON s^7

myself for critical writinor j have read throuo^h Dr.
Johnson s Lives of t/ic Poets a^ain. His ' l\)j)e ' is
a very important bit of criticism. Since Sam Johnson
we have been knocked about by critics of more brilliancy
than authority, and I feel the want of an authority.

I have been trying once more, after thirty years, to
get through Westward Ho, coming to it fresh from
Stevenson's Ballantrae, The contrast is fatal to
Kingsley, he is so garrulous, frothy, slap-dash. He (and
others) remind me of Punch and Judy. I mean they
scream behind puppets. Stevenson opens a door and
live people come in, and without being introduced
descriptively, they grow into characters, keeping their
own counsel. But in this new Stevenson there is but
one man whom one can like at all, to wit Mackellar.

To Miss Janet Bartrum.

Nov. 1 6, 1889.

I did not expect you to be comfortable with Phaedo.
I do not follow Plato at all easily even with Hind's
extraordinary mind to guide me. But at least the
human interest is kept up — probably there is no book in
which the beauty of youthful character is so finely set
off by contrast. Greek gentlemen are there — perfect
ingenuousness, candour, teachableness : and perhaps no
book, not even Victor's ' 1 793 ' novel, shows so poetically
how an unselfish man can love and enjoy friendship in
the presence of death.

The argument always seems to me to be grounded on
2i petitio principii., on the assumption of \//-v)(>/'s existence.
This I think our Editor does not notice, nor did I in class
speak of it.

Elsewhere in Phaedrus we read Tracra -^vy^] adavojo^

N n 2

548 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

[eoTt]. Here I doubt whether Plato means every [indivi-
dual] soul. I rather think he only means ' all soul,'
just as we in modern science say ' all matter is inde-
structible : ' ' omnia mutantur, nihil interit.'

Andrew is vehemently eager to study Zoology or
Natural History, and I guess that will be his ruling
passion if he lives ; but he can be, probably will be, also
a scholar and a good speaker and writer in his own
language. I have been just now telling his mother in
Finchley Road and West Heath (also in a sleet storm)
how a R.N. sailor can stop at harbours and cities, and
get days on shore and study geology and collect speci-
mens of birds and beasts and fishes, and also see the
society of cities such as Sydney and Shanghai and
Capetown, and be a sort of Chesterfield- Ulysses. Mean-
while I plant a few trees round the little farmhouse
which he will inherit, which he will perhaps turn into
a shooting box for his own use.

These projects break the shadow of death and shake
the torpor of the decaying body.

There is a blank verse poem, ' Frost at Midnight,' by
S. T. Coleridge, which I read when I was young — it
contains the gist of what I design for my child.

To P. Warre Cornish.

Feb. 2, 1890.

A. D. C. was here last week, and said that he had
been trying to get some 'humane' reminiscences of
Keate, and since then I have tried to think of some.

I. He was grimly indulgent to a lad standing by his
side, on the estrade, to hear his sent-up exercise read
over: it was Alcaics — towards the end they became
good, but the reader ceased to read with rotundity,

i89o] ZOOLOGY. DR. KEATE 549

recog^nizin^ his own undergraduate Ode, probably
printed at Cambridge (Hrowne's Medal ?). . . The story
is that the jackdaw was very cjuietly displumed.

2. Do you know the story of idiot Hates ' insisting on
being flogged with the rest, and [being] refused the
honour? E. Coleridge told it me. Bates was forgotten,
being a goose, by some forty Fifth Form, who agreed to
shirk a penal ' absence ' at 8 p.m. on a summer day, in
order that some of them might go to Surly for ducks and
peas. Keate called at the big elm just outside the cloisters.
Bates, at the stroke of eight, was bewildered by finding
himself there alone, and on seeing Keate coming under
the gate of Weston's Yard, shrunk behind the elm.
Keate had a suspicion of some human presence, and
moved slowly round the tree, but Bates moved with
equal skill. Keate retired. Next day sent for the
culprits, and whipt them, but did not call ' Bates,' whom
he growled at, ' get away, stupid boy,' when Bates
pitifully said he wished to suffer like the rest of the
fellows. The explanation is that Mrs. Goodall had, from
a window, seen Bates prowling round the tree, and had
told Mrs. Keate.

3. Keate had a pious scruple about using the birch,
either on a Sunday or (I think) on Saturday afternoon,
when we had to go to Chapel at 3, fresh from a wretched
Scripture lesson taken nominally at 2 on the top of the
* resurrection pie' dinner of 1.30. I think this scruple
accounted for his surprising patience at ' prose ' on
Sunday at 2 in Upper School. Not being then in Fifth
Form I did not sit under him at prose, but my brother
well remembers his solemn rebuke of the late Duke

^ Archdeacon Furse remembers a similar incident in 1832. The boy's
name was Hulse.

550 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Feb.

of Rutland, followed by no threat. We lower boys
had to wait till prose was over, and Fifth Form Theme
set ; when Fifth Form came downstairs we went up,
and flocked under the estrade just to be called over.
I suppose Keate could not otherwise be sure that we
did not enjoy three hours, 12-3, the Dames not being
trustworthy for making- us come to dinner at 1.30.

One day my friend, H. Brereton Trelawney (nephew
of Colonel Brereton of Bristol Riots) had a bit of looking-
glass with him, and dazzled Keate, and was by him
' nailed.' I thought my friend s last hour was come,
and I never got over my amazement at his being let
off without a threat. . .

I have one impression of his teaching. We sat astride
on benches in Upper School, he from his desk roared |
out as sense for verses (in trials) the Psalm about the
ships and the wonderful works. We did four bits of
work, no viva voce, no printed papers : in the Library
he gave out the result. I remember 'Johnson mi.:
(i) Very well ; (2) Yo^ry well ; (3) well ; (4) very well ' ;
and I remained captain, as I had been since the first
fortnight of my Eton life : and so I was encouraged to
believe myself to be superior to Whyte Melville, Percy
Herbert, Bryan Milman, &c., &c. ! What rot school is !

To fit Keate into English history, I should like to
point out how our good grandsires were forced to do
honour to ferocity, because of the Mutinies. The very
time of Kcates beginning work as an Assistant is
also the mutiny time, when the splendid courage of
Jervis, Earl St. Vincent, saved the country. The books
give full particulars, especially a good little ' Naval
Career,' Lives of Markhams, that I can lend you.
For some eight or ten years our sea-captains were

i89o] DR. KEATE 551

tempted into terrible fierceness. Corbett of the Africaine
(^confused by Tennyson with HhVh of Hcnmone) ; vSir
Edward Hamihon, who after recovering Herutione^ was
dismissed the service for cruelty ; Dacre, who lost
Gucrn'cre^ beaiuse he, being a very young- captain, lost
the hearts of his men (ask Hale about this) ^ ; Words-
worth, mate of the K. I. C.s Montrose^ my father's ship,
1 798 (the Wordsworth of the Daisy)^ a dour carle who
quelled a mutiny, and saved my father's life thereby ;
Camelford, acquitted for shooting disobedient Petersen
in cold blood (rightly acquitted, but a brute all the
while) : all these, and scores more, had to be terrible
when there were real dangers to the Commonwealth ;
and the squires who knew how hard it was to rule the
peasants wished no doubt to have their beefy brats
coerced sharply.

In the eighteenth century there was a barring out at
Winchester, and the militia called out to coerce the
scholars.

I believe Heath and his family and lofty lavenderesque
Goodall had let the discipline dow^n by the time Keate
took the reins, but I have no proofs of this. What is
certain is that Keate found it impossible to get efficient
assistants from the only allowed stock, King's. He
was eventually obliged to go elsewhere for Edw^ard
Coleridge and Pickering. He had far too hard a task
set him. . .

I am reading Dr. Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale.
Macaulay seems not to have read them, except, perhaps,
the last. They are to me wonderfully pleasing. Neither
Macaulay nor Carlyle seems to me to do justice to the
man's good taste.

* His father was a passenger in the ship Montrose, going out to India.

552 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

I have but lately become the owner of Johnson's works, \
and I am as old as he was when he wrote to Mrs. Thrale '
from the Hebrides. . .

To Hon. R. B. Brett.

March 24, 1890,

I was interested in Admiral Mayne's short speech, in
which he boasted of having- been at Eton two years ; he
was a fine able boy in my very first division, November,
1845, ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ™y abundant poverty I gave him
a costly prize, and one night in the old House of
Commons his father, Sir Richard Mayne the policeman,
came up and spoke to me kindly ; the first ' parent '
I think that ever did me that kindness.

To Miss Margaret War re Cornish.

March 26, 1890.

To y^]^a^ yefjL€L Xrjdris — I think the heroine ^ was called
' Nest.' . . The corner of lawn and shrubbery outside the
library ^ was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in
a country pleasaunce or 'policies.'

M. C. has got on fast in Greek since Christmas, and
she urges me on through Plato's Banqtcet^ and she has
lent me Lewes 's Life of Goethe, which I find wonderfulh
clever and apparently sensible. I am not consoled for
your absence, but still the ten discipulae do their best
to console me. One recruit is very spirited, and she
actually enjoys doing exercises out of the third part of
Nuccs, a l)ook which I constructed ages ago — I never
did the third part before, and T feel like Bishop Lonsdak-.

' Of Mr. Gaskell's Ruth. ' At Tan-yr-AUt, North Wales.

[89o] ADM. MAYNE. ANGLO-CATHOLICS 553

who, after examininc;" a lot of youngs fellows, examined
himself in his own papers, marked conscientiously, and
came out third /

To A. D. Coleridge.

Hampstead, August 21, 1890.

On Sunday up here a clever priest, Gurdon, preached
to the effect that Newman had suffered failure through-
out— this seems to me a tenable theory — the preacher
went on to say, rather finely, I think, that failure or
mortification was the sign of a blessed saint. He showed
how St. Mary and Salome were tried by rebukes.
However, what I am to stick up for is ' historical theory,'
and I say solidly that Manning is wrong in saying, as
others have been saying, that the Anglo -Catholic revival
was wholly due to Newman.

That Churchmanship which shows itself in the spon-
taneous foundation of new Bishoprics is a totally different
thing from the expenditure of thirty or forty millions in
restoration of church fabrics. It is to be accounted for
by a sincere, though mixed, affection for the Elizabethan -
Caroline Church, which affection undoubtedly w^armed
many under the influence of those who were not disciples,
but only patrons and coadjutors of Newman. These
Anglo -Catholics were shocked and thrown down by his
weak submission to the 'securus orbis terrarum,' and
when the shock was over and a new start effected, a far
greater percentage of Anglo-Catholics, a second crop,
the Epigons, started vestments, and a whole lot of
* mock turtle,' and a few of the independent or un-
New^manic Anglo-Catholics, such as Tom Carter, found
it expedient to honour these cultured ritualists, these
rivals of Ruskin and Prince Albert, these (^lAoKaAot,

554 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Sept.

these Ammergau evaporators of dogma in scenic
mytholog^^: but history will declare that the Anglo-
Catholics, such as Bishop Browne of Winchester,
survived and kept their solid dogma above the new
froth- current.

The English Church now shows corruption in a new
form ; the rich aspiring tradesmen have perceived that it
is fashionable ; therefore, instead of sending their sons
into the Army, they turn some of them into Anglican
curates, and they insist on having them licensed to
London churches, so as to be in society, invitable to
garden-parties at Lambeth, caressible for ladies who
pique themselves on founding every summer some new
ephemeral 'charity,' i.e. an institution for the main-
tenance of tame cat secretaries, ' Society Curates.' . . The
Established Church is one facet of the prism of fashion
or of society or of culture, whichever one chooses to
call it.

The plain unworldliness of Littlemore, Hursley, &c.,
may be remembered. I think I saw a late trace of it at
Canon Courtenay's parsonage in Devon, about 1874;
perhaps it is to be found elsewhere : but I can no longer
go about to observe.

To Miss Rose Paul.

Sept. 9, 1890.

Do you know what I used to admire in your father
when he was on duty at Eton ? He made the best of
boys, that others, masters and boys, tabooed more or
less. I did not know much, but I inferred a good
(leal. It is a rare grace, that sort of ' charity ' for
scapegraces.

1890] MAHAN'S 'SEA POWER' 555

'ro Hon. R, n. Brett.

Trafalgar Day, Oct. 2r, 1890.

I have just read in the Times Mahan's ' Sea Power,'
my pet topic. I have been over the Beachy Head fight
once more, lately, and I am in the dark about ' Torring-
tons skill'; the established opinion is that he lefi: the
Dutch in the lurch. It was to me long ago clear that
Tourville was a muff after that battle. Mahan and
Twtes seem to generalize too broadly. Sea power
has probably told in about one w^ar in ten of European
wars since 1500. In Yankeeland it w^as river power that
told quite as much as sea power, so that the generalizing
in Mahan is after all not scientific. The sea must be
commanded no doubt when it is the pathway, so must
a river. The sea must be commanded when the com-
batant nations' wealth depends greatly on maritime
trade.

Frederick the Great got on well without the command
of sea or navigable river.

The reckoning of captures at sea is inconclusive : so
is the reckoning of land fights when not followed
by dispersion of van -guarded armies or by the fall of
important cities.

Both by sea and by land a victory not followed by
either of these results may be important in forming the
self-esteem of a people. Granson and Morat and Bunker's
Hill are such battles. Similar to them are the four
known frigate fights of 181 2, and the exploits of Farragut
and Tegethoff in bumping ironclads.

556 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [June ^

To H. W. Paul. I

25, Cannon Place, Hampstead, June 12, 1891.

We shall be at home to-morrow, and disengaged. . . i
In any event we shall be very glad to see you and
your honoured mother. I believe she once only was at
Eton in my time, and I have cherished the remembrance
of her graciousness.

It seems in chronology a broad gulf; but impressions
seem to form as fast as the bubbles of \vine (or to speak
honestly, of Guinness) when one lies a-thinking on
a sleepless morning, waiting for one's hot water.

* — hoc est
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.'

That is all very well : but the wise men never prepared
me for the sudden confluences of memories. One reads
about old age till one is tired of the topic, and then,
when the thing itself comes, one finds a strange land.

This is my last week in my ' baronial halls.' . .

This last week before the flitting has been the most
gay or sociable we have had here, and your kind visit
will crown it.

I write once more that I am truly grateful to you for
your fidelity.

Journal.

Aucriist 10, 1 89 1. Next day we were taken along
the dear old Windsor Park drives to Queensmead
Cottage, where Howard Sturgis entertained us splendidly
and gracefully. . .

That night, driving back, wc saw Jupiter and other
himinaries, and this was a new thing for some of us ;
and a week later we have seen Jupiter again from

,891 ] SEASCALE. LIVY 557

Cumberland. These sights take me back to micl-h*fe
attempts at expansion or venture ; the years roll hack,
I own my identity. . .

Skascale. — We are well {ad here, and have plenty of
air, light, freedom. No flies. We have been kindly and
respectfully treated by many of the other sojourners.

One clever man last night sent his gentle ' cultured ' v^ife
to my wife wuth a newspaper containing an article about
the French sailors at Portsmouth, which quoted my
Quebec ballad ^ w^ith strong praise in the peroration, and
I amuse myself in imagining some French sailor reading
about the ballad or even reading the ballad itself.

It would be a comfort to know^ that my poor mind
and pen had soothed the wounded patriotic heart of
a Frenchman.

I am quite of a mind with the man who wrote that all
over the w^orld, wherever men love their own country,
every one loves France as ' I'autre patrie.'

August 2^. I have read the 22nd Book of Livy in this
house ; nothing was worth mentioning. I am surprised
to find that I had forgotten nearly all the curiosities of
style, grammar, and statement in the book, though I read
it and pencilled hard at it in 1873. I see plainly that
I have never ' known Latin things ' for more than fifty-
five years. I have written things in Latin that have
been successful. One is unconscious of limitation when
one is writing things that are called ' original.' . .

I should like to come back another year to these
things ; thrice have I enjoyed solitude out there, just as
I did long ago. The charm that Ilfracombe had for me
in 1829 cannot be recovered, nor the charm of Livermead
in 1883 ; but since childhood I think I have never loved

^ 'The Two Captains,* Lyra Heroica, p. 283,

558 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Aug.

a sea-beach more than the fortnight here in the vTrwpeia
of the Cumberland hills.

Aicgiist 28. I had a very interesting little talk with
the landlady, Mrs. Braithwayte, after paying the bill ; she
had the perfect grace of a modest, sensible, dutiful lady.
She did not mind my parting with hand on hand, just as
I often did in France with landlords ; but there it was the
host that held out his hand, here it was I. . .

Lancashire looked both brighter in the buildings and
less crowded with buildings than it might have been,
considering the great increase of industry since I
travelled through it in my prosperous active days.

The upshot is that I am pleasurably surprised to find
the good sights and sounds improved, not obliterated,
by the lapse of twenty -five years ; and I now love
Cumberland as I love Nithisdale.

To H. 0. Sturgis.

Pilgrim's Lane, Oct. i, 1891.

It ^ ought to be solemnly, copiously reviewed by one
of our Quarterlies, and if they w^ould pay me ;^io I'd do
the job ; and I think no one is now living in this island
that was a more faithful enduring Northerner than I. . .

I have borne the reproach these thirty years, and now
I am in the transfigured army of ' Linkum,' Farragut,
Cushing, Le Roy, Craven, Robert Shaw. Your Hob
finds a good place in the book, though not so good as
he deserved; but the writers arc overburdened with
heroes and saints.

I talk about this grand book to the ladies who keep

' The Life of Abraham Lincoln^ by Hay and Nicholas.

i89i] LIFE OF LINCOLN. LORD COCK BURN 559

me alive. They are almost all of them born into this
upholstcrous and hypnotic world so recently as to be
quite lost, amazed when I tell them of all the grand wars
that were wao^ed in my time. We weep over Nicias in
Sicily after orreat struirgles with Thucydides — but that
is bag-atelle compared with Lucknow, Strasburg, Ander-
sonville . . .

Some time last year I wrote down (a propos to Shelley)
an attempt at a definition of poetry to the effect, ' poetry
is the reflection of emotions and impressions rendered in
choice words and measures.' This I think includes

* epic ' narrative, excludes wit in verse.

I think the word ' measures ' (not metres) will include
Ruskin and Burke's, and other people's fine passages in

* prose,' and also the English renderings of the song of
Deborah, some Psalms, some bits of Isaiah, Solomon, &c.

To Miss Urith Coltman.

Pilgrim's Lane, Hampstead, Oct. 14, 1891.

... I wonder whether you, when in Scotland, read
Scottish books.

A future Laird in Strathearn asked me last month for
a list of fifty books. I put down three volumes that
I have read and possess, and two that I have never seen,
all by Henry (Lord) Cockburn. My old pupil, Rosebery,
used to think with me that Cockburn had the finest
vScottish mind ever known — he loved Scotland wisely
and was content with it. I remember that he noticed
w^ith joy and pride the wonderful improvement of
Aberdeenshire effected in his own lifetime, the sterility
overcome by mind and by law guiding and guarding
industry.

560 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Oct.

I envy you and other modern ladies reading Homer
for pleasure. In the thirties we used to ' do ' seventy
lines a week of Iliad for five years — mere treadmill.

I have enjoyed Homer tenfold since the lady -volunteers
came. In Scott's life one learns that everything good in
poetry can be traced to Homer : because Scott took two
scenes, Marmion watching the fight and Rebecca
describing the fight to Ivanhoe, from a scene in Goethe's
Gotz von Berlicktngen, and Goethe took his fight-
picture from Homer's Helen on the Walls.

Scott knew no Greek : he did pretty well without it,
and he is, to some of us, a good deal nearer and dearer
than Homer. . .

To Miss Janet Bartrum.

Oct. 20, 1 89 1.

It ^ is, I think, of all books, the one that most pleases
me as a book of Courage. Charlotte Bronte is the one
writer who knows what it is to be a teacher : she is the
Homer of girl school life. I have for some thirty years
preferred her Caroline to all women in books. Some
men have preferred Rose Jocelyn, or Di Vernon. We
used long ago to be compelled after dinner in country
houses to fill up papers containing such a question as
' What woman do you admire most } ' I remember
when I had to do the answer, my predecessor on the
paper, an Italian refugee, Dante scholar, &c., wrote
' Mrs. vSomerville,' I wrote ' Helen ' : odd contrast. . .
I went about thirty years ago with two Cambridge
scholars on a pilgrimage to Charlotte Bronte's home,
Haworth. She was not nearly so good or wise as
Mrs. (iaskcll or Juliana ^ or perhaps Christina •', but
she told us all about her eager passionate life.

' Currcr licU's SJiiriev. '^ Mrs. Ewing. ^ Christina Rossctti.

i89i] 'Shirley: ' lyra heroica' 561

One sees how far happier the p;"irls of this later ap[-e
can be than the poor Ikonte ^irls could be : how far
more free and joyous than Jane Austen could be. iMy
; srandmother knew Jane.

Eton Wick is in the fairly open old-fashioned flat land
l^tween Eton and Dorney Common. I was once inside
a cottaore there, and at the deathbed of a man who liked
me — he was a private in the Eusileers, who served in the
Albuera fio^ht, A. D. i8i i. He and I used to talk war in
1854-5. I deeply regret that in those days I had not
more leisure, more courag^e, more sympathy with Eton
Wick, but I lived mostly with bulls of Bashan, partly
with the male counterparts of the Daisies and the
Mildreds, But I did know some cottagers in Dorney,
and I did help the good Shephard, parson of Eton, who
got the Eton Wick Church built.

To Miss Rose Paul.

Dec. 7, 1891.

Those marines, with their gay enthusiasm and their
cabins decked with home-made works of art were,
unconsciously, recruiting for the Royal Navy. If sailors
were as good at sea as on land, ships would be ' Glendo-
veers.' Ages ago, I was talking to an old army man,
a gentleman — he assured me that the Benbow on land
is very different from the real quarterdeck utterer of
expletives. . .

Lyra Heroica has turned up in large paper — the editor
Henley seems a good fellow — it gave me a sweet pain to
see that he printed Sir F. Doyle's ' Private of the Buffs '
and ' Red Thread.' They will be known when the more
recent gushings of Swinburne are forgotten .The ' Red
Thread,' being based on Charles Napier's narrative, ought

o o

562 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [Jan.

to rank with historical authentic poems — yet it is not so
interesting to me, nor nearly so brilliant as Kipling's
' East and West,' a poem in which there is not a feeble
line, nor a superfluity. . .

I mourn over the book for the death of the two
contributors who w^ere kind to me, F. Doyle and Mat
Arnold. I w^as once with Hawker at his churches ;
a beautiful old man he w^as ; and I am glad that Henley
has put his Trelawney into the book. But Hawker was
not redolent of Devon -Cornwall so much as of the
Oxford which bred Kebles. There was nothing in his
talk or work that could make him a local bard.

To Lord Halifax.

Hampstead, 1892.

Three pheasants found their way to this little cottage,
my last home, and I was very glad to see them, as they
came from you, and presumably from the house which
I entered, timidly, in 1854.

I was told in May last that the house was altered
architecturally, and I suppose the skies are darkened
by industry, and 1 have read that there are no Wentworth
hounds to enliven the brake down in the valley, which
I remember being silently suddenly lighted up with red
coats.

I have been reading a sane instructive book, the Life
of Tail {^Y^iw. of the Tait {— State) Church he may be
called) ; and therein I met with my brother, and with
you, treated historically.

... I became an old man at the end of 1890, and
1 have heart disease of a tolerable kind. . .

1 still teach, gratis, and the discipulae are wise and

189a] ARCHBISHOP TAIT. SAILORS 563

kind, and I :ini improvino- in Latin and Greek, and
I never croak about my own affairs or about lui^land.
Your water-colour and photoorraphic portraits hang- or
, stand in my little bedroom now. . .

I am yours till death (not long),

Wm. Cory.

To Miss Rose Paul.

Jan. 7, 1892.

It is a safe generalization that about A. D. 1500 people
paraded as Knights of Romance by book, whilst they
suffered and plotted by book : Machiavelli and Ariosto
in conjunction.

There is a romantically brave sailor, Primaguet,
captain of La Belle Cordeliere A. D. 151 2 (Duruy, vol. i.
p. 596).

There is a capital account of the unique French sailor,
Suffren, in a very wholesome American book which
I would offer to lend, as it is my own, did I think ladies
cared to read Naval History. The writer, Mahan, is
evidently a perfect gentleman. He loves Nelson and is
proud of Hawke, Hood and other Englishmen. He
writes his best to warn Uncle Sam of the danger of
getting into a war without a strong navy.

To Miss Rose Paul.

Jan. 16, 1892.

The last two days that my wife spent in her lodging-
she acted as nurse to a poor governess . . . always in pain
— astonished and touched at a stranger playing the
Samaritan. . . What was touching, was her taking pains
to explain that she was ' only a governess,' as if any one
could have a stronger claim than a governess.

002

564 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [March

Write a paper on governesses. I can give you ' sense,'
as the boys say about verses. It is a solid fact to the
credit of my times that there have been man}^ governesses
treated courteously, generously, affectionately in ' good
houses ' without being Jane Eyres.

To A. D. Coleridge,

Hampstead, March 9, 1892.

Strange monsters there were at Cambridge, but of all
places in the world it was kindest to me ; kind beyond
all my imagination. Yet how dismal I should be, if
I were living there in rooms and hirpling into a hall
through a crowd of young men who knew me not. As
it is, I am beyond all imagination blest by the long
cheerful and rational interviews with ten voluntary
learners, and correspondence with five others.

I have been imagining (' figuring to myself in the
good old phrase) a pretty signalling line — when the
first Newnham lass took her degree, other friendly girls
stood at the door of the Senate -House (let us say close
to Mr. Pitt), and when the lady's name was given out
she waved her handkerchief, and another beaconed it
down past the Gate of Honour, and another to Clare
Lodge, and so from court to bridge and to the end of
the avenue, where there was a bold Camilla who
galloped with the good news to Newnham. There's a
subject for the author of ' The Princess.' And I am blest
with the friendship of at least ten girls who would have
graced such a signalling party — girls of the Newnham
age, I mean, of the age of Melissa. One of them is
enjoying the borrowed Lucretius.

1892] ' girl-graduates: ' PRAELECTIONES' 56:

To Miss Rose Paul.

Hampstead, March 23, 1892.

Perhaps you may not have heard of the Latin Lectures
on ancient poetry delivered at Oxford by Keble, Pro-
fessor of Poetry. He made much of the play Hippolytus
as a foreshadowing of Christian purity ; and possibly
he, or people like him, might find a type of avacrroiiji^
in the ' Virbius ' of Aricia, whom Ovid ^ makes out to
be Hippolytus restored to life. Anyhow, one of the
prettiest things in Greek is the prayer of Hippolytus
to Artemis in Euripides, which is charmingly translated
by Mallock in the New Republic.

It gave me a new type of romantic translation, in
which the modern versifier walks alongside of the classic
poet, and has a colour of his own, and does not think it
his duty to be concise.

The Greek passage is in Thackeray's Anthologia
Graeca — it has a rare grace of movement; and the acScoj
line seems to me to be a touch of poetry very similar to
what we relish in Keats and Tennyson.

To A. H. Druinmond.

April 14, 1892.

I was a young man when I lost my mother, and since
then I have always been wishing to dream of her as I did
once, eighteen years ago. It is the great, irreparable,
painful loss. I have no solace in recollecting, but in
a dream only the sense of time disappears.

To H. W. Paul.

Pilgrim's Lane, Hampstead, N.W,, May i, 1892.

You have been so good as to take an interest in my
minute attempts at verse. It is possible in these micro -

^ Metam. xv. 479-544.

566 LETTERS AND JOURNALS [May

scopic obituary days that, when I am gone, some one may
be paid a penny a line for noticing my obit, and it is
possible that my wife and son may be alive then, and
it might give them a little pleasure if the notice com-
prised mention of the fact that Munro, who was reckoned
the best Latin scholar in Britain, approved of my litde
scrapbook of which I send the key ; and I think you are
the likeliest of my few friends to remember this little fact.

Please observe that it was only for pedagogic reasons
that I wrote Sapphics ; it is a stupid mistake to make
boys do them. They are far harder to write well than
Asclepiads or Hendecasyllables.

I believe Munro disdained all the Alcaic prize Odes
that were recited at Cambridge Commencements. I re-
member admiring one of them, Maine's.

Snow (Kynaston), by luck, once put me on the right
scent about lyrics. He said they must ' reflect.' When
one analyses this, one sees that what is reflected is not
only an impression but an emotion. However, one
cannot, for boys, avoid narrative even in lyrics.

In my Lticretilis what interests me now, is that
I wrote about Walter Scott at the age of about fifty with
the very same affection as I wrote Latin Elegiacs about
him, about the ship that took him to Italy, when I was
in the Remove at the age of twelve. The usher then set
' a ship ' as the subject for verses. I chose H. M. S.
Bar/iam, which sailed with Scott on board five years
before. Absurd as the Eton schooling was, it had the
one redeeming charm of giving one the curious pleasure
of authorship.

President Warren told me a week ago that Tennyson
went out of his way to tell him that the WeHington Ode
was not a commanded Laurcatic thing, but quite spon-

i89a] ' LUCRETJLIS: MUNRO 567

taneous. Perhaps you may already know this, It is to
me interesting-.

' The son or that nerves a Nation's heart is in itself
a deed ' — cf. Pindar's p?//jta kpy\xaT(iiv xpovLu>Tcpov \ &c., &c.,
a scrap well paraphrased by Sir F. Doyle. Do you
remember how you and I collated two editions of the
Wellington Ode ?

In the discourse about Walmer Castle that was in the
Times, there was a slight mistake. Lady Hester told
her physician who wrote her MefJtoirs, that one summer
when Mr. Pitt came from London he was surprised at
seeing a pretty flow^er-garden at Walmer. She had
been left there, and had charmed the soldiers of the
garrison so that they worked for her and made her
garden. This seems to me a pleasant little thing, and
likely to be true. It is long since I read Lady Hester's
Life : it ought to be reprinted ; what there is about her
in Eotken might be thrown in.

(Enclosure.)

'Trinity Collegf, Nov. 1871.

My dear Johnson,

Your little book has reached me at last, and a great
delight it has turned out to be.

I don't mean to flatter you when I tell you that in my
humble judgement they are the best and most Horatian
Sapphics and Alcaics which I am acquainted with that
have been written since Horace ceased to write.

H. A. J. MUNRO.'

To Mrs. Drummond.

May 4, 1892.

I am very thankful to you and your husband for again
remembering us. I find that I am too much broken to

^ Nem. iv. 10.

568 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

accept your very friendly and tempting invitation, and
my wife shrinks from going without me. I have had
a fortnight since Christmas free from palpitation and
dull pains in the chest and the arms. I am more liable
now to these pains than I have ever been, and I cannot
reckon on being able even to stroll about your beautiful
lawn ; and I think it unmannerly to drop down dead in
another man's grounds.

In going to shops to-day, mere crawling, I had to
stop every fifty steps, and two days ago my manoeuvres
moved the pity of a sensible gentleman, probably a
doctor, for he said ' cardiac'

I am able to talk, teach, write, read, and till this week
I was able to scribble Latin and Greek verses ; and even
this week I wrote, by request, a lot of suggestions of
subjects for Lord Tennyson, who wants to fill up one
more volume. . .

I wish to say now, in good spirits, good-bye to you
and your husband, and to thank both of you for unde-
served kindness. May your olive branches bear fruit
for the honour of England !

Letters to Parents (various dates).
L

As a sign of progress I may note that he made a very
lively and, with slight drawbacks, a very cogent speech
about the strife between Charles I and his Parliaments —
undoubtedly a better speech in clear elocution and enthu-
siastic rhetoric than I ever heard made in ' Pop,' except
by one of my contemporaries.

But on my own account I value still more his quick
and genial appreciation of the poetry which, often at

\

LETTERS TO PARENTS 569

his own request, I read to him^and I have hardly ever
spent pleasanter hours than In interpreting the poems
I like best to such a hstener.

In addition to what I have before said of his more
personal merits, I have to add that beyond any one I ever
saw at Eton (though not beyond undergraduates, who
are so much more warm-hearted than schoolboys) he
displays a vivid sympathy with other boys in their joys
and sorrows, and expresses it with hardly any exaggera-
tion, with no artificial or slang phrases, and with nothing
that can be called sentimentalism. He is not indeed the
only enthusiast I have or have had amongst my pupils,
but he is the only one free from paradox and exempt
from ridicule. . .

II.

The more I see of him . . . the more forcibly I am urged
to the belief that, after making all possible allowances
for past interruptions and irregularities, he is in his
present state of health to be blamed for not working
harder at the things which he does not like. He has
always something on hand, some new interest (except
indeed when impatiently longing for the holidays; — he
takes his pleasure actively, not indolently, and if he idles
it is with a will. . . He very often does things that I wish
him to do, but my influence gradually becomes less
and less, as the social influences of the school become
stronger.

I regret amongst other things that he takes no interest
in our debates, which have become more grave and more
deep : he hardly listens, and if he speaks at all, he speaks
rather frivolously compared with those who have out-
stripped him in debating.

570 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

III.

I

He has been . . . entering on his new duties as a steerer of
a longboat, and he has been naturally and easily launched -j
into the fashionable society of the school at large, instead
of being limited to a few acquaintances in his own house
and his own part of the school. . . I trust that he will
retain too much discrimination to accept the friendship
of young people less conscientious and less refined than
himself and his old friends, and that he will not let him-
self be so far carried away by gaiety as to lower in the
least the respect which has been hitherto shown him by
his schoolfellows. I have noticed and I have pointed
out to him, and in this letter (which, if you please, I would
wish him to see) I would distinctly repeat the observa-
tion that he seems to me nowadays to be too intent upon
having his own way, carrying his point, getting some one
to tell him this or to do that for him, having the last
word in argument, proving his superiority to others,
asserting paradoxes and trampling upon regulations.
I should consider myself the chief agent in developing this
sort of wilfulness, if I did not from time to time protest
against his eagerness for success. Such protests are but
seldom made, for he is one to be easily disgusted with
anything like moralizing or advice : but they are a little
more frequent now than they were last year, and I begin
to see the day draw near when I shall be no longer able
to make them, when in fact his social success will (as
I know from sad experience) enable him to disregard
the judgement of one whose esteem will be no longer
wanted as an ingredient in his cup of pleasure.

LETTERS TO PARENTS 571

IV.

I am late in writing to you about your boy, who must
have told you loner ago that he did well at school since
January. He entirely satisfied all his teachers, and
showed that he had a very good head and was in good
mental condition. Unexpectedly he showed a turn for
verse writing, which is decidedly the most dignified and
brilliant work that young boys do : he is the most pro-
mising of my younger pupils in this, and I was not
surprised at his being sent up for good by Mr. Ainger :
it is the old-established distinction at Eton, being a com-
plimentary introduction to the Head Master. He may
gain it every term if he likes.

He is remarkably nimble and clear in all that he does,
and sometimes answers a question that would puzzle his
seniors. He is now in the prime of boyhood, the time
in which mental processes are as much enjoyed as mus-
cular efforts ; and I cannot reckon on his being equally
teachable and equally efficient three years hence ; but at
present he seems likely to turn out a real scholar as well
as a good ' examination boy,' or mark-getter. . .

He reads English books with eagerness, and gets
absorbed in his reading at once. He picks out of my
shelves all sorts of things, but shows discretion, and
seems to fasten upon things that suit him, like a bee
with flowers.

He is very cheerful and sociable, and fearless, and has
such good manners that he gets on very well w4th boys.

He goes to walk with me now and then, and is excel-
lent company. I should like to have him for a guest
here [Halsdon] some day : he would find plenty of rustic
employment.

572 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

V.

I conclude you know ever^^ detail of your boy's success
at school. I have to comment on it so far as to point out
that he is younger than almost all those with whom he
has been compared, and that he is of a more easy, cheer-
ful and flexible habit of mind than those pupils of mine
with whom I can compare him.

Modesty is common enough, but he is unusually
modest, and though he can hardly surpass the others in
tractableness, he is more childlike at least in manner.
He has been found fault with two or three times by me
for bits of negligence, and he is not absolutely regular,
but he is much improved during the year in the way of
punctuality. . .

I think you will admit that the boy has learned to
write better : I think his hand an original one, and
likely to be a serviceable one. I think he is also much
improved in his tone of voice ; he speaks to me now
very gently and sweetly, without the snarl that he had
when he came to us. He goes in and out of a room
and does everything in so graceful a way that no one
would think that he was short-sighted. . .

VI.

... I have no doubt all your witnesses were right : the
boy is sometimes very neat, sometimes very untidy.
When his jacket is conspicuously dirty I have him (like
others; brushed on the doorstep : at all times I encourage
him, and he is eager, to wash in my dressing-room close
to puj)ilroom, as others do gladly. . .

He has been a good deal in my rooms of his own
accord, and I have often seen him after the work was

I

LETTERS TO PARENTS 573

over [TO to a book and lose himself in it at once, instead
of talking-. He manag-es to enjoy games without talking-
of them, and to pick the brains of teachers without
making them the subjects of silly and wearisome con-
versation. Being often in the company of other pupils
of mine, all at their ease — talking — he never as far as
I remember, says anything stale and frivolous.

VII.

I am persuaded that he might be a good scholar,
having a hard head, and being entirely free from all
irrationality. I do not see that all sensible people are to
be expected to take an interest in the trite morality or
the hackneyed mythology which form the staple of sub-
jects set for composition ; but where there is a faculty of
expression, as in this case, I think it ought to be culti-
vated, even though the subjects set may seem trivial. . .

His shyness is part of his character, and is so inex-
tricably connected with his virtues that I should be afraid
to tear it away. I believe that it will drop off in due
time, at least as far as \\all be good for him.

I see no boy at Eton of w^hom I can more confidently
predict that he will grow up, without need of much
interference, into a character that we may look upon
with admiration and delight.

VIII.

He has seemed to take an interest in the Tacitus we
have been reading, and to understand it. But the only
real satisfaction I have had in him is that he has listened
gravely and thoughtfully to whatever I have had to say

574 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

ah)Out things in general, things which I am myself far
more interested in than the elegancies of dead languages.
He is worth anything to me as a listener. I am con-
fident that he will be an enlightened sensible man with
no affectation or frivolity ; the only doubt is whether he
will attain the acts of expression so far as to obtain as
much personal influence as his manliness and thoughtful-
ness would naturally claim. . .

is so bad a scholar that I cannot conceive how

he passed his matriculation, or how Mr. C. let him go.
His exercises, prose and verse, are as bad as possible.
He leaves out words so that verses have not feet enough :
he puts a word with the wrong couplet, every third word
is illegible, hardly a line construes or scans.

I can scarcely get him through his ' number ' of verses
or lines of theme. His maps are by far the worst that
are shown up. He cannot construe two lines of any
lesson. He is good at answering questions in the Bible,
or history — not bad at parsing, generally attentive and
eager. Mr. S. thinks badly of his attainments ; but they
seem to live in peace together, which is, under the cir-
cumstances, creditable to so lively a boy. . .

I cannot venture to form any positive opinion about
so young and wild a thing, except that he is very happy
and very innocent.

IX.

I am happy to be able to give a better account than
usual of both the brothers now with me at Eton, though
I do not pretend to know so much about either of them

as some tutors know of their pupils. has done one

respectable copy of Oreek Iambics at the very end of
the schooltime : and I believe he might, if he liked, do

LETTERS TO PARENTS 575

a ^ood deal on that line, being" unusually accurate in
detail and not wrong-headed about idiom. His Latin
verse continues to be flat and dull, but once or twice it
was more lively and polished. His themes have been
utterly contemptible.

On Wednesday nights he has with praiseworthy regu-
larity presented himself for two hours' extra work, but
he has seldom been able to make any sense out of the
passages given him for translation — only in Greek prose
he has been fairly successful. Other lessons seem easy
to him : he is far above the average in accuracy, but his
mind repels the amenities of literature.

I am afraid he does not take any interest in anything-
that I hold forth about. If I were capable of playing
cricket, I daresay I should be equally indifferent to all
but ' action.' Only let no one deceive himself, or say that
we schoolmasters allow him to deceive himself. A lad
who is playing cricket cares no more about the cultiva-
tion of the mind than an active London attorney or
dentist cares. Even when he w^as laid up, though he
could not play, he disliked book-stuff just as much.
He will, perhaps, like it when it comes in the form of
*■ action ' : that is, when he is actually working for an
important examination. But if people think that the
young men read for the love of knowledge in this gene-
ration they are in the dark. Not one in fifty does.

I am for my own part half inclined to be satisfied
with a cricketer, if he does his duty honestly, paying so
much rent in Greek and Latin peppercorns for the lease
of the playing-fields : and if he does his duty to the
Headmaster, as well as to me, and if he does his duty to
the Mathematical Master nearly as well, I am satisfied.
But I am not sure that it is so.

576 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

He stands very well with his schoolfellows, and must
needs be henceforth a person of first rate influence :
I think it is a very good thing for the school that he
stays.

X.

has improved, not having got near the barbarous

age, though in his more gloomy moments he tells me
that he objects to Latin. His pace in verse-making is
now quite satisfactory, and he shows some sense, though
no appreciation of the difference between nominative
and accusative or the like. I like doing lessons with
him, and particularly reading the Bible with him.
Sometimes he shows an unexpected amount of know-
ledge, quite beyond his companions. It is sad to think
that it must be all left in Upper Club : unless, indeed,
knowledge is, as I often think, of no great value.

XI.

. . . Not being able to come on Tuesdays to Virgil, he
came on Wednesday to do something as a substitute :
and I tried on him the experiment which I should like
to make generally : that is to say, I got him to read and
abstract certain portions of French books, such as
Michclct's France^ Guizot's Essays (not Lectures) on the
Early History of France, and a neat book on Political
Economy by a Belgian, Comte de Beaulieu. I cannot
say that he did this very well, but it was good enough
to encourage me. . .

is the most good-natured, obliging, patient boy

I ever had in piipilroom, and shows his manly rationality
f)y taking a wholesome interest in everything cxcej)t the

I

LETTERS TO PARENTS 577

technicalities of g^rammar, for which he has the most pal-
pable incapacity. Nothing" can be so desperate as my
endeavours to get him through the exercises in French
idiom which are set him.

Till I had to work him through sentences on the
model of ' Je viens d arriver ' and ' lis vous en veulent,'
I had thought Latin grammar the most unapproachable
mystery for solid young minds : but I am now almost
reconciled to ' non est cujusvis sua nihili facere ' and
' vereor ut evadat orator,' and the other choice bits of
pedantry inflicted on the Fourth Form. All this he
gets through with an imperturbable good temper which
astonishes me. His exercises pass through three editions,
and after all fail to reach the public teachers, or reach
them only at the wrong time.

XII.

He has done a good deal of extra work for me in
pupilroom, always cheerfully and with fair skill : much
of this was ' penal servitude,' for unpunctuality. It some-
times looks as if he would w^ork to any amount at things
that I set him and in which he sees that I am interested :
and I doubt whether I ever had a pupil who was more
of a disciple : but as I object to discipleship and conduct
school on Protestant principles, I hope he wull grow up
like others, an independent Briton.

It is a great pity and almost a reproach to the school
that a lad of this calibre should, merely for lack of skill
at cricket, have no chance of admission to a literary
debating society : we have been wishing to found a
second ' Pop ' for such people.

Pp

578 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

XIII.

has been, like others, all the better for the ab-

sence of cricket : he has made school work the principal
thing, and he has had enough fives and football to keep
him sound.

I have liked seeing him at singing-lessons, where he
is grave and dutiful and tranquilly happy. I have also
liked to see him at leisure times, when waiting for exer-
cises, playing with his affectionate neighbour T., with
whom he has spent so many laborious hours at Fourth
Form work: he seems to have the gift of unbending
and melting without softness, and he wiU have soon
a singular charm for our young people, the charm of
sweet gravity.

XIV.

The Newcastle is in my opinion an unsatisfactory
examination. There are forty-seven boys of great
power of penmanship swamping two examiners, who
are allowed five days, besides a Sunday.

There is a mass of ' Divinity ' written which quite
overwhelms an ordinary examiner : I met one the other
day sighing the sigh of relief after getting rid of the piles
of stuff written by ' those who had something to say, and
by those who had nothing.' At least a dozen excellent
boys were examined this time, of whom nothing is heard
but thin apocryphal rumours passed through the more
or less corrupt ears of their tutors. . .

If every one were to take pains in the next Christmas

examinations it would be easy to see 's merit relative

to the others in pure Classics — but then this calculation
woukl be spoilt by the Divinity, which is an invention
for the benefit of unfastidious and garrulous boys. . .

LETTERS TO PARENTS 579

XV.

... I judge of a boy's fitness to leave school by his
amount of experience and attainment, by his having-
exhausted the resources of the school in teaching, by the
claims of his profession. To stay at school either for
prizes or for athletic distinctions seems to me vulgar.

XVI.
I have never been induced to think myself a good
Eton tutor : and even the authoritative judgement of one
better acquainted with the school than most of our em-
ployers cannot make me think that I was entitled even
to qualified or limited praise as a tutor. Though I think
I was, most of my time, a good Division master, which is
rarer at Eton, and yet seems to me less hard, than tuition.
I always say that there is nothing so good at Eton as the
friendship of tutor and pupil, particularly when both are

young, and I shall be very glad to find that at least is

?i friend of [his tutor]. . . Your sons have undergone the
' critical treatment ' of which I am in the habit of prating,
and they have escaped that domination and moulding
which they would have undergone had they been the
pupils of so consummate a tutor as Mr. Edward
Coleridge.

To a Pupil.
My dear young friend, never look coldly on an olive
branch, or a mere leaf thereof How much it costs a
strong mind to make the effort to hold it out. I have
just read in Hodson's^ Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life
how an officer who had been his enemy came up to ask
him to shake hands when they were together in camp,

1 W. S. R. Hodson, of 'Hodsons Horse.'
P p 2

580 LETTERS AND JOURNALS

not in actual battle, saying that in such times of danger
he could not bear to stand apart from one who was
doing so much for the country. Death is encamped over
against us, whether we be at Delhi or not : and he ought
to scare people out of the scruples that hinder them
from reconciliation.

INDEX

Abbotsford, 42, 97.

— (visit to), 42, 47.
Abraham, Bishop, 5, 209.
Academy of Letters, 480.
— , Royal, 389.
Achilles, 119, 193.
Acland, Gilbert, 373.
Actors, 504.
Agamemnon, 458.

Aix la Chapelle, 245.

Alcester, Lord, 499, 522.

A Ices t is, 367.

Alexandria, 328.

Althorp, Lord, 410.

Amafuf'us, 249.

American War, 82-84.

Angers, 219.

Anglo-Catholic Movement, 553.

Annie Rowan, 243, 401.

'Apostles,' the, 29, 74, 159.

Army, 363, 3S7, 446, 447, 537.

Arnold, Matthew, 451, 532, 562.

Asceticism, 362.

Ashley, Lord, 24.

Auber, 463.

Austen, Jane, 541.

— Persuasion, 545.
Autonomy and Isunomy, 425.

Bach, 436.

Balzac, 278, 317, 389,405-

Barnstaple, 542.

Battle Abbey, 101, 102.

Battles, 555.

Beaconsfield, Lord, 419.

— his knowledge of men, 426, 444.

— summary, 471.
Biography for boys, 513.
Boconnoc, 77.

Boers, 465.

Books and Character, 416, 453, 454.
Bournabul, 339.
Bracton, 487, 492.
Bradshaw, Henry, 45, 153, 359, 402,
461.

— Admiral, 443,
Brocklebank, Rev. Thos., 153.
Bronte, Charlotte, 99, 185-187, 560.
Burnham Beeches, 257.

Burns, 94.

— his grave, 92.

Burton's History of Scotland^ 184,

525-
Butler, Bishop, 295.

— Rev. H. M., 85, 189, 190.

Cairns, Lord, 456.

1

582

INDEX

Cairo, 310.

Coningsborough, 105.

— mosques, 311, 327.

Conington, Professor, 212.

— pyramids, 315.

Coniston, 237.

— rides in, 326.

Constantinople, 341-345.

Cairoli, 412, 475.

Cory let a, 292.

Calverley's Theocritus, 521.

Country life, 365.

Cambridge, in spring, 24.

County Franchise, 437.

— advice to Freshmen, 68, 159,

359.

Craven Scholarship, 13, 21.

402.

Crimean War, 60-68, 265.

— conversations at, 177.

— journal at, 375, 535.

Dalhousie, Lord, 82.

— Newnham students, 564.

Dante, 294, 461.

Canning and Castlereagh, 1 74.

Darwin and Carlyle, 405.

Capenoch, 174-177, 263-267.

— and Mill, 401.

Carlaverock (or Caerlaverock)

, 92,

Darwin's funeral, 484.

494-

Dollinger, Dr., 87.

Carlyle, 51, 94, 376, 406.

Doyle, Sir Francis, 562.

— and Darwin, 405.

Dreams, 234, 565.

— summary, 478.

Dresden, 271.

Caxton, 546.

Dryburgh, 95-97.

Cayley, A., 155.

Dufferin, Lord, 76, 276.

Ceylon ss., storm on board, 297-

■305.

Dumfries, 93.

Chardon, Madame, 530.

Diirer, Albert, 250.

Chartres, 220.

Chaucer, 417, 543, 544.

Earthly Paradise, 237.

Chaveton, 181.

Edinburgh, 98.

Chenonceaux, 217,

Education, Essays on a Liberal, aoi,

Chess, 353.

212.

Chios, 320.

Egypt, the people, 330 ff.

Chivalry, 459-463, 483.

— and England, 346, 407, 506-508,

Christianity and * Society,' 361.

510.

Church History, 115.

— from the train, 325.

Cicero, 524.

— silence of Nile valley, ibid.

Cid, the, 459.

Eliot, George, 229, 420.

Clark,;. W., 179.

Ephesus, 333 ff.

— Kennedy, Sir A., 93.

Epigram Club, 16, 17.

— W. G., 152, 153.

' Erastian,' 59.

Cliflford, W. K., 413,414, 441-

•443-

d'Espinasse, Mademoiselle, 433,

Clovelly, 161-166, 200.

443-

Cockburn, Lord, 559.

Eternal Punishment, 475.

Coleridgc,Kev.Edvvard,i3i,386,390.

Eton, a boy's last year at, 123, 157.

— Sir John T., 18.

— appointment as Master, 29.

Commission, Universities, 54.

— diary of work at, 53, 110- 1 30,

— Public Schools, 75.

313, aj6.

INDEX

583

Eton, doubts about accepting Master-

Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, 355, 393.

ship, 36-33.

Golden Horn, 343.

— • Election Saturday' (1868), 235.

Gordon, General, 504-508.

— first impressions, 38-41.

Ciovernesses, 563.

— leaving, 5, 127.

Grasmere, 239.

— letters on leaving, 280-386.

Guernsey, 195.

— reform, 74.

Guide to Modem English History,

— school lists, 241.

440, 453-

— Sunday lessons, 183.

— telescope, 255.

Plackel, Dr., 331.

— thoughts of retirement, 158, 265.

Hallam, Henry, 9, 12, 13.

— tutors, 358, 360.

— Henry H., 9.

— visit to (1844), 25.

Halsdon, 199, 271, 277.

— water-party, 273.

— animals at, 275,278,387,427,452.

Euripides, 543, 565.

— buildings, 355.

Everdon, 186.

— concert, 369.

Eversley, Lord, 252.

— cricket-ground, 288, 380, 427.

Ewing, Mrs., 510, 560.

— flowers, 277, 372, 381, 383, 385.

Exeter Cathedral, 257.

— invitation to, 275, 387, 292.

— Lalage, 289, 371, 377, 380.

Federation, pan-Britannic, 508

— lessons to apprentices, 366.

Feudalism, 494, 495.

— neighbours, 365, 429, 431.

Florence, Victor Emanuel at, 85.

— planting, 357,

Fountains Abbey, 188, 189,

— shooting, 289.

Fourier, 296.

Hampstead, 511, 515.

French formulas, 341.

Handel and Mozart, 295.

French, study of, 497.

Hartland, 200.

Furness Abbey, 89.

Hatherleigh, 197.

Ha worth, 187.

Gaskell, Mrs., 552, 560.

Hawtrey, Dr., 5, 19, 29.

German language, 351, 400.

Heliopolis, 313,

— literature, 485.

Heloise, 415, 417.

Germany, tour in, 46-48.

Herbert, Edward, 347.

Gibraltar, 306, 363.

— George, 169.

Girl-pupils, 523, 532, 543.

Herschel, Sir John, 173.

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 71-74,

Hickleton, 104, 132, 208.

426, 511.

Hoar Cross, 423.

— and Disraeli, 428.

Hodson, W. S. R., 579.

— and foreign affairs, 451, 511, 516.

Homburg, 269.

— summary, 517.

Homer, 559.

Glasgow, 142, 144.

Honour, 525, 542.

Goethe, 405, 527.

Horace, 525.

— and Balzac, 405, 527.

Horner, Francis, ii.

— and Scott, 393.

Houghton, Lord, 34, 400.

584

INDEX

Hughes, T., 58.

Hugo, Victor, Miser ables, 143, 145,

— Marie Tudor, 316.

— Marion de Lor me, 394.

— Quatre-vingt-treize, 374.

— Travailleursdela Mer, 175, 195,

374-
Hutten, Ulrich von, 374.

Huxley, Professor, 437.

India, 531.
Infinity, 475-478.
lonica, I, 208 ; II, 434.
Ireland, 515, 519, 528.
Irving, Edward, 225, 361.

Joan of Arc, 14S.
Johnson, C. W., 367.

— Dr., 551.

Keate, Dr., 548-551.

Keble, John, 52, 131, 245, 554, 562,

565-
Keswick, 91.
Killarney, 144.
King's College, Cambridge, the

boat, 32.

— Provost's election, 541.

— reform of, 156, 290.

— resignation of Fellowship, 290..

— Tutorship, 156, 158.
Kingsley, Charles, 79, 547.
Kipling, R., 562.

Lanfrey, Napoleon I, 513.

Latin, neglect of, by Greeks, 500.

Lawers, 243.

Lawrence, Sir Henry, 523.

' Lcbcwohl ' verses, 530.

Lecture, at Windsor, on Geology, 50.

Lectures on Science (to pupils), 53,

1 1 1.
I>eghurn, 122.

Lesseps, 306, 407.

Letters to Parents, 568-580.

Lincoln, Abraham, Life of, 558.

Livy, 525, 542, 544, 557.

Loches, 2i8.

Loch Ryan, 243.

London, barrister's life in, 27-32.

— children, 55.

— churchyards, 297.

— walks in, 220, 243.

— working-men, 57.
Long Chamber, 2, 21.
Lucretilis, 205, 566.
Ludlow, J. M., 57.
Lyra Heroica, 561.

' Lyrics,' 566.

Lytton, Lord, 414, 415.

Macaulay's Lays, 14.

— essay on Madame d'Arblay, 15.
Madeira, 447-450, 479.
Magdala, journal on board, 315 ff.
Mahan's Sea Power, 555, 563.
Maine, Sir H. S., 16, 23.

— Ancient Law, 492.

— Essay on Shakespeare, 115.

— Popular Government, 520.

— visit to Eton, 46.
Majuba Hill, 464-463, 470.
Malta, 309.

Manin, Daniele, 377, 412, 437, 475.
Manning's Sermons, 15.
Marriage, 436.
Martial, 527, 544.
Mathematics and Music, 155.

— elementary, 294.
Mayne, Admiral, 55a.
Maynooth Grant, 33.
Mediterranean, 308.
Melbourne, Lord, 134, 410, 533.
Melrose, 95.

Middle Ages, chivalry, &c., 459-

463-

— law, &c., 487, 495.

INDEX

585

I

Middle Ages, literature, 481.

war, 495.

Mill, J. S., 350, 356.

Moilern History Professorship, 48,

362, 272, 273.
Monsell, Rt. Hon. W., 128.
Moore, Sir John, 537.
Moral Sciences Tripos, 56.
Munro, Professor, 178.

— on Luc ret His, 567.
Music, 79, 256, 279, 472-474.

Napier, Sir Charles, 123.

— Sir William, 123, 242.
Napoleon HI, 102.
Naval biographies, 513.
Navy, 499.

— age of entering, 522, 540.
Nelson, 469, 544, 545.
Newcastle Scholarship, 7, 21.

— Duke of, 63.
Newman, 129, 354, 553.

— Apologia, 130.

— autobiography, 421, 553.

— poems, 213, 354.
Newspapers, 457.
Nicholas I, 24, 138.
Nicholas Nickleby, 4.
Nile, 317 ff.

— birds, 323, 324.
Niton, 230.

Northbrook, Lord, 253.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, 204.
de la Noue, Fran9ois, 79, 118.
Novels, old and modern, 539.
Novel-writing, 36S.

Orders in the Church of England,

382.
Outram, Sir James, 134.

Paris, 194, 432.
Parliament, debates in, 65.

— reform of, 501.

Pcra, 341.

' Pcrfide All)ion,' 345.

I'ericlcs, 515.

Philae, 320.

Philip van Artcvelde, 12.

Pitt, 77.

* Plain living,' 444.

Plato, 17, 19.

Plato, 80, 241.

— Phaedo, 546, 547.

— Phaedrus, 547.
Plymouth, 258 ff.
Poetry, definition of, 559.
Poets, 483.

Poultry, 452.
Preaching, 385.

Quantock Hills, 261.

Queen's visit to Cambridge, 19.

Republicanism, 369, 373.
Roman gentlemen, 525, 544.
Rome, 85.

visit to, T20.

Rossetti, Christina, 229.
Ruskin, 351.

Sacerdotage, 382.
Sailors, 561, 563.
Sainte-Beuve, 501, 537.
Salisbury, Lord, 418, 527.
Ste, Aldegonde, 118.
St. Malo, 433.
Scipio, 544.

Scott, Sir Walter, 42-44, 184, 454,
566.

— his last poem, 276.

— Kenilworth, 498, 560.

— Lady of the Lake, 211.

— St. Ronan^s Well, 405.
Seascale, 557.

Shairp, Professor, 245, 247.
Shakespeare, 142, 248, 394-398.
Shelburne, Lord, 77.
Shelley, 454, 545.

586

INDEX

' Shepherd Lord,' 136.

Shirley, 560.

Sidney, Sir Philip, 81.

Smyrna, 331.

'Society,' 361, 531, 540.

Spanish Gypsy, 229.

Spenser, Faerie Queem, 213, 498.

Stanhope, Lady Hester, 567.

Stanley, Dean, 480.

Stephen, Sir J. F., 87.

Sterling, John, 20.

Stevenson, R. L., and Kingsley, 547.

Stewart, Sir Herbert, 509,

Strzelecki, Count, 171.

Suffren, 563.'

Sunday lessons, 115, 183.

Swinburne, 412, 454.

Tait, Archbishop, 418, 562.

Tan-yr-Allt, 513,552.

Taylor, Henry, Edwin the Fair, 9.

— Philip van Artevelde, 12.
Teachers, hints to, 214.
Teleology, 485.
Tennyson, 422, 475, 499, 568.

— Enoch Arden, 142.

— Heavy Brigade, 483.

— peerage, 502.

— The Princess, 564, 568.

— Wellington Ode, 533, 567.
Theocritus, 521.

Thorvaldsen, verses on his death, 81.
Torrington, 182, 183, 200, 542.
Tours, 217.
Tnrgeneff, Fathers and Sons, 378.

— Lisa, 398-400.

— Reliques Vivantes, 434.

Turkey, 61, 417,425,438.
Turks, their virtues, 337.

University life, 403, 403.

— lectures, 496.

Vaughan, Dr., 107.
Vienna, music at, 348.

— St. Stephen's, ibid,
Virgil, 117, 451, 526.

— Dido and Aeneas, 530.

Wales, North, 513.

Waterloo Stories, 93, 147, 148.

Wellington, Duke of, 93.

— his funeral, 533.
Westminster Abbey, 103, 121,

541-
Whewell, Dr., 56.

— on Astronomy, 116.
Whigs, 86, 365, 409.
Wiles, H., sculptor, 149, 151.
Wilton House, 167-174.
Windsor Election, loo.
Wolseley, Lord, 447.
Wood, Sir Charles, 108, 210.
Woodham, Dr., 151, 153.
Wordsworth, 97, 245-247, 337.

— Excursion, 353.

— Solitary Reaper, 247.

— Sonnets, 239, 246, 451.

York Minster, 45.
Zoology, 548.

243j

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